DEN99LA085 · Cessna 172L
Cessna 172L · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Gunnison Crested Butte Regional Airport (GUC) to 2DT · Chandler, OK
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99LA085
- 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 172L
- 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
- N172KB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gunnison Crested Butte Regional Airport (GUC)To 2DT · Chandler, OK
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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 › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Gunnison, CO, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that after an engine run-up, he departed on runway 24 using full power. He said that at 'approximately 100 to 150 feet off the surface a vibration began from the engine, immediately began loosing [sic] airspeed, lowered nose to regain airspeed (set some flaps), gradually raised nose of the airplane, (checked settings) lost airspeed, lowered nose again, to regain airspeed, raised nose, continued to lose airspeed, began looking for a place to set down.' He said that he turned left approximately 90 degrees and then left another 45 degrees before he impacted the ground. The pilot reported that he had approximately 93 hours of flight experience, and this was his first flying trip to Colorado. A witness reported that the accident pilot 'porpoised the airplane during takeoff roll, and I could hear his stall warning horn going off.' Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the mixture was in the full forward position. At the time of the accident, the density altitude was calculated to be 8,734 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent stall/mush immediately after takeoff. Factors were the high density altitude weather condition, and the pilot's total lack of experience in type of operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99LA085
- Event ID
- 20001212X18753
- Case number
- DEN99LA085
- 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: bcef9532456a37c3b372b99471428b8452bced4459aa0d818a440538d38c52b3; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:05:02.468Z.