CEN25FA320 · Cessna 172L
Cessna 172L · Accident en route
From Lawton Fort Sill Regional Airport (LAW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25FA320
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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
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
- N2860Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lawton Fort Sill Regional Airport (LAW), Lawton, OKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1971)
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On August 14, 2025, about 0934 central daylight time, a Cessna 172L, N2860Q, was destroyed when it was involved in an accident near Walters, Oklahoma. The pilot sustained fatal injuries. The airplane was operated under Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations as a Part 91 personal flight. The pilot, who was an independent flight instructor at Lawton-Fort Sill Regional Airport, Lawton (LAW), Oklahoma, was allowed to use the airplane for pilot proficiency purposes by the airport authority. Airport personnel did not know of the pilot’s schedule for any flight training activity on the day of the accident since the pilot would solely maintain that schedule. An airframe and powerplant mechanic at LAW stated the pilot did not report any mechanical discrepancies with the airplane before the accident flight. Radar data showed the airplane departed from runway 17 at LAW, about 0833, and proceeded eastbound for about 10 miles before beginning a series of turns with relatively constant altitude and no large altitude deviations. During the last minute of radar data, the airplane made a right turn and proceeded northbound, decreasing in altitude and gaining airspeed until the radar data track stopped. The accident site and impact features of the airplane exhibited an airplane nose-down, high-speed, impact with terrain. The airspeed indicator, which was separated from the main wreckage, indicated about 155 kts. Accident site ground scarring contained a hole several inches deep within the ground consistent with the airplane nose that was surrounded by ground scars of the main landing gear wheels and both wings. The wings, fuselage, empennage, and control surfaces were all contained within the main wreckage. Both wings were crushed inward to their respective main wing spars and their wing flaps were in the retracted position. The airplane pitch trim was about in the neutral position. The propeller was separated from the engine and displayed rotational features of chordwise scratching and twisting.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25FA320
- Event ID
- 20250814200786
- Case number
- CEN25FA320
- 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. 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: 19ac9f6e9c9db1ee2680debc472378c7c1074de1ec1c597cc7fa4b55c56f2c7e; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:08:01.861Z.