CHI00LA036 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport (PLK) to AOV
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA036
- 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 172M
- 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
- N69LM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport (PLK), POINT LOOKOUT, MOTo AOV
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was unable to activate the airport and runway lighting systems using the Common Traffic Advisory Frequency (CTAF), 122.9, as listed on the Kansas City Sectional Chart. The pilot reported that he continued the approach to the unlit airport area. The pilot stated that during the approach, he elected to go-around and during the go-around the right main landing gear touched-down off the right side of the runway. The pilot reported that he then retarded the throttle and the airplane impacted a pile of dirt and rocks about 250 feet past the departure end of runway 13. The CTAF for the Ava-Bill Martin Memorial Airport is 122.7. The CTAF frequency was incorrectly listed in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) publication database.
Probable cause
the improper in-flight decision made by the pilot. Factors to the accident were the charts/other manuals depicting the incorrect frequency, the dirt bank, and the rocks.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA036
- Event ID
- 20001212X20203
- Case number
- CHI00LA036
- 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 1999-12-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7a5c5be1e86475d8359e55a0435cd6c01cf72927e9171d33fdbd5223f676c507; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:34:01.160Z.