MIA99LA030 · Cessna 172N
Dolphin Holiday Flying Club Cessna 172N · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99LA030
- 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
- N1901S
- Operator
- Dolphin Holiday Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE)To not recorded
- 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
- 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(cfi) › Raising of flaps, not verified
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight departed, performed airwork, then executed a practice ILS approach to the runway. After touchdown about 2,000 feet down the 6,001 foot long runway with the flaps fully extended, the pilot-rated student performed a touch-and-go landing and placed the flap selector to the 'up' position. The flight continued and climbed to about 100 feet where while flying near the departure end of the runway, the CFI noted that the airspeed was not increasing. One of the rear seat occupants advised him that the flaps failed to retract and unable to maintain altitude, the CFI maneuvered the airplane for a forced landing on a road. While flaring for landing, the left elevator contacted the roof of a vehicle. The airplane then touched down, collided with a light pole, and came to rest upright. Post accident examination of the airplane revealed that the flap circuit breaker was popped; no determination could be made as to the reason for flap malfunction. The flaps were determined to be fully extended and the airplane was about 39 pounds over gross weight at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot-in-command to note that the flaps did not retract while the pilot-rated student performed a touch-and-go landing on a 6,001 foot-long runway. Factors in the accident were the total failure of the flap system for undetermined reasons and the operation of the airplane in an overgross weight condition by the pilot-in-command (CFI).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99LA030
- Event ID
- 20001211X11476
- Case number
- MIA99LA030
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-11-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ee5b44e4e8d6fcf9843e4b7de9aa0505fce88ecbc23612dc900098126947d33e; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:22:03.921Z.