CEN23LA097 · Cessna 172L
Cessna 172L · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) on approach
From Dan Jones International Airport (T51) to Cleveland Municipal Airport (6R3)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA097
- 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 172L
- 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
- N621EW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dan Jones International Airport (T51), Cypress, TXTo Cleveland Municipal Airport (6R3), Cleveland, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1972)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument-rated pilot was positioning the airplane in preparation for an annual inspection. The flight was conducted under night visual flight rules (VFR); however, instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) prevailed along the route of flight. The pilot reported that the cloud ceiling at the departure airport was about 700 ft above ground level (agl). The pilot inadvertently flew into clouds while en route and remained in instrument conditions for about 10 minutes. During the final approach the airplane descended below the clouds, but the pilot was unable to locate the airport and “saw only pitch black” with no visual references. The airplane subsequently struck trees shortly before the pilot intended to initiate a go-around. It subsequently came to rest nose down in a wooded area. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and both wings. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. A Notice to Air Mission (NOTAM) pertaining to the destination airport indicated that the runway lights were unserviceable during the time of the accident flight.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to attempt the night flight under visual flight rules when instrument meteorological conditions prevailed resulting in the airplane striking trees while on final approach. Contributing to the accident were the unserviceable runway lights at the destination airport.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA097
- Event ID
- 20230130106657
- Case number
- CEN23LA097
- 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, coordinates, 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: 34a6f4cda129f5669d9f27e5cda1068648d088e5cf962f94747ee7921772566c; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:17:45.431Z.