WPR22LA069 · Cessna 172N
Fox Two Cessna 172N · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Placerville Airport (KPVF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22LA069
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N6280F
- Operator
- Fox Two
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Placerville Airport (KPVF), Placerville, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1979)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Approach · IFR final approach
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The operator reported that the pilot was on an instrument flight rules (IFR) flight plan and was on a return flight to an airport after retrieving a company airplane. Radar data revealed that while on the approach path to land, about 3 miles from the destination airport, the airplane descended to 25 ft above the ground and shortly thereafter, the airplane impacted powerlines and came to rest on a rooftop. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings, the fuselage, and empennage. A local law enforcement officer reported that as the pilot was being transported to the hospital, he stated that he was disoriented during the approach. The officer added that the visibility during the time of the accident was less than ¼ of a mile. The operator reported that the pilot did not inform him or the other company pilot flying ahead of him in another airplane of any mechanical malfunctions or failures to the airplane or engine that would have precluded normal operation prior to or during the flight.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain altitude during an instrument approach, which resulted in an impact with power lines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22LA069
- Event ID
- 20211228104450
- Case number
- WPR22LA069
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9943375542cfe62689e469a47ce235ee498860cc783eb839a048324332163dfb; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:51:14.440Z.