NYC97LA131 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Grand Canyon Regional Airport (N38) to Ransome Heliport (42PA)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA131
- 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
- N97613
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Canyon Regional Airport (N38), Wellsboro, PATo Ransome Heliport (42PA)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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 › Flare, improper
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff, the airspeed indicator failed, and the pilot diverted to another airport. The pilot removed mud from the pitot tube and refueled the airplane. He then departed with the passengers to return to the original point of departure, and while en route the airspeed indicator failed again. According to the pilot, '...As (the destination) has 50ft obstacle on one end, I elected to land downwind...I made a low and as slow an approach...Upon landing I found I was too fast and applied full brakes on uneven terrain. Front wheel broke off and I held the airplane up...When the front came down, the gear post dug into the strip and the aircraft flipped on it's back...' Examination of the airplane and the grass airstrip revealed that the airplane touched down on the first one-third of the runway. The airplane bounced and touched down about 1,000 feet from the approach end of the runway. It then became airborne again, touched down 500 feet later, and the nose wheel dug into the dirt and the airplane nosed over.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper inflight decision to land downwind with an inoperative airspeed indicator, and his improper landing flare.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA131
- Event ID
- 20001208X08235
- Case number
- NYC97LA131
- 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: 1f6ba4bddcdb50c9e746a3b87728fe8cf48b015ec21e8a9825ae531360aad4b8; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:23:52.654Z.