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IAD97LA072 · Cessna 172H

5 May 1997 · WESTMINISTER, MD, United States

Cessna 172H · Accident: overrun during landing

From Capital City Airport (CXY) to Clearview Airpark (2W2)

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Event

NTSB case
IAD97LA072
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 172H

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
N3748F
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Capital City Airport (CXY), Harrisburg, PATo Clearview Airpark (2W2)
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
Landing · landing roll
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
Destroyed

Cause areas

  • Pilot in command › Distance, misjudged
  • Pilot in command › Go-around, not performed

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The private pilot's initial landing attempt resulted in a go around on the 1,845 foot long runway, with a 278 foot displaced threshold and a greater than 2% downward incline starting at midfield. On his second attempt, the pilot estimated the touchdown point was about 300 feet from the numbers, and the airplane continued to the end of the runway even with constant braking. The Federal Aviation Administration Inspector reported that the airplane touched down about midfield, and drifted off the runway during rollout. Braking was attempted with one main wheel on the pavement and the other wheel on the grass. The brakes were locked as the airplane went off the runway, down the embankment, and flipped over.

Probable cause

The pilot misjudged landing distance on the runway and his failure to perform a go-around.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record IAD97LA072
Event ID
20001208X07935
Case number
IAD97LA072
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: 77a4f55037597cc7b4374cc5e2727fb8c3bc5fde57f15b49e4b2ddaba4e28d47; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:47:32.537Z.