IAD97LA063 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Lee Airport (ANP) to Lee Airport (ANP)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97LA063
- 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 172N
- 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
- N739AH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lee Airport (ANP)To Lee Airport (ANP)
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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) › Raising of flaps, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor was briefed the winds in the local area were about 13 knots with gusts up to 21 knots. The instructor and student pilot then departed on a training flight. On short final for his third landing, the student had 65 knots on the airspeed indicator, 30 degrees of flaps set, and the carburetor heat on. As the student flared the airplane, a gust of wind lifted the right wing, and the instructor took control of the airplane. The instructor was unable to aligned the airplane with the runway. He added full power, did not touch the flaps or carburetor heat, and executed a go around. When the instructor added power, the nose of the airplane pulled more to the left, and the ground track was in line with two hangars. He avoided the hangars, but was heading for a small field. Unable to maintain level flight, and in an attempt to gain airspeed, the flight instructor lowered the nose of the airplane. The airplane continued to descend, and the flight instructor stated that 'he flared as much as possible to soften the touchdown (impact).' According to information manual for the aircraft , 'In a balked landing (go around) climb, reduce the flap setting to 20 degrees immediately after full power is applied. If obstacles must be cleared during the go-around climb, reduce the wing flap setting to 10 degrees and maintain a safe airspeed until the obstacles are cleared...after clearing any obstacles, the flaps may be retracted as the airplane accelerates to the normal flaps-up climb speed.'
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to raise the flaps during the go-around. Factors involved were the high wind conditions and the pilot's failure to remove the carburetor heat.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97LA063
- Event ID
- 20001208X07728
- Case number
- IAD97LA063
- 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: 4c31a264545ca6cd9b368591e5cf9ae481cd24ef699bf017e9bf03505750632a; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:58:53.498Z.