ERA25LA361 · Cessna 172K
Wings Over Texas Holdings Cessna 172K · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA361
- 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
- 0 · 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 172K
- 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
- N78938
- Operator
- Wings Over Texas Holdings
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 57 years (built 1968)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
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 September 20, 2025, about 1733 eastern daylight time, a Cessna 172K, N78938, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Salisbury, Connecticut. The flight instructor and pilot receiving instruction sustained minor injuries. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 instructional flight. The flight instructor reported that after departing they climbed to 7,000 ft mean sea level (msl) and had been in cruise flight for about 10 minutes when the engine rpm dropped about 100 rpm. The flight instructor turned on the carburetor heat and the engine rpm continued to drop to about 1,400 rpm as the airplane began to descend. The engine then began to “pulsate” between 1,400 and 2,000 rpm until the airplane reached about 3,500 ft msl, when the engine then experienced a total loss of power. The flight instructor reported the issue to air traffic control as soon as he noticed the engine rpm issues and was informed that the closest airport was 20 miles away. The flight instructor noted that they were flying above a racetrack and decided that would be the safest place to conduct the forced landing. He completed the “rough running engine in flight” and “engine failure during flight” checklists but was unable to restore engine power. The flight instructor subsequently conducted a forced landing to the racetrack. The airplane impacted a guardrail, which resulted in substantial damage to the engine mounts and fuselage. The airplane was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA361
- Event ID
- 20250922201063
- Case number
- ERA25LA361
- 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: 4a64e6c56f473a5c213cd1410e11750b0dee2f55d0ba31aa8f0ae93c114a2cca; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:22:19.996Z.