FTW96LA300 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: overrun during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA300
- 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
- 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 172P
- 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
- N62511
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Overrun
- 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
- Landing gear, normal brake system › Inoperative
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, annual inspection, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
In order to check the aircraft performance, the pilot decided not to fly the airplane until after conducting a 'highspeed taxi test.' During the test, the speed reached 40 knots and the pilot pulled the power to idle and applied the brakes. The brakes failed with 1,600 feet (the final 700 feet downgrade) of runway remaining and the airplane rolled beyond the departure end of the runway. Examination of the brake system by a mechanic, who had not performed previous work on the airplane, revealed the brake discs were worn beyond approved limits, and areas of the brake pads were worn down to the rivet heads. The wheel bearing grease was hard and all the bearings were dry and pitted. The right side brake cylinder was pitted and leaking. Dirt filled the brake master cylinders. The last annual inspection was completed on 6/10/96, and the airplane was returned to service by a mechanic with a FAA Inspection Authorization.
Probable cause
Inadequate maintenance by maintenance personnel resulting in inoperative brake system during an aborted takeoff. A factor was the downhill runway condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA300
- Event ID
- 20001208X06222
- Case number
- FTW96LA300
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: a013e96701bb7b63c0da22c0a661fe0cc507c5c908b4f6623ef390cea44f6515; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:00:47.605Z.