CHI98LA254 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: overrun during landing
From Salina Municipal Airport (SLN) to Abilene Municipal Airport (K78)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA254
- 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
- N9786L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salina Municipal Airport (SLN), Salina, KSTo Abilene Municipal Airport (K78)
- 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
- 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
- Dual student › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The dual student was performing a simulated forced landing to the runway. The airplane touched down normally. After rolling down the runway approximately 500 feet, the instructor pilot realized that the airplane was not slowing down. The instructor pilot took control of the airplane and applied heavy braking. Realizing that the airplane was not going to stop on the prepared surface, the instructor pilot guided the airplane onto the hard ground surface overrun. The airplane had almost stopped when 'a hidden ditch appeared.' The instructor pilot said that he did not have time to turn the airplane. The airplane dropped into the ditch. Examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to plan his approach so as to be able to stop the airplane on the runway, and the instructor pilot's delay in taking control of the airplane, so as to correct the student's mistake. A factor contributing to this accident was the ditch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA254
- Event ID
- 20001211X10276
- Case number
- CHI98LA254
- 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: 777faec1deafd828e190b4cfb2b7046681e86125dfe3674243684204114d70d2; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:38:57.453Z.