CEN24LA099 · Textron Aviation Inc 172S
Textron Aviation Inc 172S · Accident: security/criminal event while maneuvering
From Addison Airport (ADS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA099
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Textron Aviation Inc 172S
- 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
- N23107
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Addison Airport (ADS), Addison, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2023)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Security/criminal event
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Miscellaneous
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot took off and conducted one circuit of the traffic pattern at the tower-controlled airport. He then advised the tower controller that he would no longer follow their instructions and would be discontinuing radio communication and departing the area to the east. Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) data showed the airplane continued to the east about 75 miles before turning north and travelling about 40 miles. The airplane then turned to the northwest. While on the northwest track the airplane climbed to about 11,000 ft. msl and then abruptly began a descent which continued until the track data was lost. The descent rate during the final minute of the flight was about 3,700 feet per minute. The accident site was located about 0.4 miles from the final data point and on a continuation of the final course. The data did not show any evasive maneuvers or an attempt to arrest the descent. The airplane, which impacted an open field, was destroyed and the pilot received fatal injuries.
According to the flight school operator of the airplane, the pilot was a student at the flight school, but had not scheduled the airplane and was not authorized to use the airplane on the night of the accident flight.
The Lamar County Sheriff’s Office records showed that a concerned citizen called first responders to report that the pilot had left a suicide note.
An autopsy of the pilot was performed by the Dallas County Office of the Medical Examiner, Dallas, Texas. The autopsy report listed the cause of death as blunt force trauma, and the manner of death as suicide.
Probable cause
The pilot died by suicide.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA099
- Event ID
- 20240125193707
- Case number
- CEN24LA099
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2024-01-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c5ff120761e944d77c97971b2adc73dfa44f0d60c251fb9fd7862142d9c42d41; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:10:35.674Z.