NYC89LA034
1988-11-20 · OXFORD, Connecticut, United States · Serious · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed
Airport OXC
N468CM has since been reassigned. It is now registered to a different aircraft (CESSNA 172R, built 2000), which was not involved in this event.
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
COLLISION WITH TREES AND TERRAIN DUE TO THE PILOT EXCEEDING APPROACH MINIMUM ALTITUDE DURING AN ILS APPROACH.
Factual narrative
ACCORDING TO WITNESSES, THE WX WAS CHANGING FROM MINUTE TO MINUTE AS THE ACFT WAS ARRIVING. WITNESSES RPRTD THE WIND WAS BLOWING FROM EAST TO NORTHEAST AT 10 TO 15 KTS, RAIN FALL WAS VARYING FROM STRONG TO PERIODS OF LIGHT RAIN, AND THE CEILING (CLOUD LEVEL) WAS VARIABLE. THE PLT BEGAN AN ILS RWY 36 APCH; HOWEVER, BEFORE REACHING THE ARPT, THE ACFT COLLIDED WITH TREES & CRASHED ABOUT 2 MI SHORT OF THE RWY. THE PLT WAS SERIOUSLY INJURED & COULD NOT REMEMBER THE ACDNT, BUT DID RECALLED RECEIVING A WIND SHEAR ALERT. THE PLT RPRTD AN INTERMITTENT PROBLEM WITH THE AUTOPILOT HEADING MODE; HOWEVER, NO OTHER PREIMPACT MALFUNCTION OR FAILURE OF THE ACFT WAS EVIDENT. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_1988_NYC89LA034.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Search this event elsewhere
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Related research
Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (wind shear, autopilot). All research papers
- NTSB Aircraft Accident Reports 2010 · Accident report Loss of Control on Approach — Colgan Air Flight 3407
Colgan Air 3407 / Continental Connection (Q400) Buffalo NY, February 12, 2009 — 50 fatalities. Definitive investigation of the Colgan 3407 stall-stick-pusher crash on approach to Buffalo.
- arXiv 2025 · arXiv preprint ROSflight 2.0: Lean ROS 2-Based Autopilot for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
ROSflight is a lean, open-source autopilot ecosystem for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Designed by researchers for researchers, it is built to lower the barrier to entry to UAV research and acceler…
- arXiv 2025 · arXiv preprint ROSplane 2.0: A Fixed-Wing Autopilot for Research
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) research requires the integration of cutting-edge technology into existing autopilot frameworks.
- arXiv 2024 · arXiv preprint A Data-Driven Autopilot for Fixed-Wing Aircraft Based on Model Predictive Control
Autopilots for fixed-wing aircraft are typically designed based on linearized aerodynamic models consisting of stability and control derivatives obtained from wind-tunnel testing.
- arXiv 2022 · arXiv preprint Experimental Flight Testing of a Fault-Tolerant Adaptive Autopilot for Fixed-Wing Aircraft
This paper presents an adaptive autopilot for fixed-wing aircraft and compares its performance with a fixed-gain autopilot.
- arXiv 2021 · arXiv preprint An Adaptive Digital Autopilot for Fixed-Wing Aircraft with Actuator Faults
This paper develops an adaptive digital autopilot for a fixed-wing aircraft and compares its performance with a fixed-gain autopilot.