FTW96LA393 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From 1V5 · Boulder, CO to 3V5 · Fort Collins, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA393
- 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 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N7568V
- Operator
- The Pilot Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1V5 · Boulder, COTo 3V5 · Fort Collins, CO
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During takeoff on the second leg of an instructional flight, the flight instructor was making the takeoff from runway 26. Wind was from the west at 15 to 20 knots and published airport information cautioned pilots concerning possible turbulence during west departures with strong winds. The aircraft became airborne and settled back to the runway. After becoming airborne a second time, the instructor said the stall warning went off and the controls felt 'mushy.' The takeoff was aborted, and during landing roll, the aircraft went off the right side of the runway, down an incline and into a lake.
Probable cause
Failure of the flight instructor to maintain airspeed above stall speed during initial climb and loss of control on the ground after aborting the takeoff. Factors were inadequate preflight planning and preparation, inaccurate weather evaluation, and high winds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA393
- Event ID
- 20001208X06737
- Case number
- FTW96LA393
- 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: 15abffcbb83ce52aceacc14b44b4c84dc32e659ddcda2ec1bb4f31f0fbcd0fe4; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:05:57.621Z.