MIA00LA046 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident while maneuvering
From GWW to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA046
- 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
- N9234H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From GWWTo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The CFI was to check the private pilot in the airplane and before departure, the pilot was briefed to expect a simulated engine failure. After performing airwork, loss of engine power was simulated. The CFI reported the pilot picked an 'excellent' field but did not use flaps and overshot it. The CFI advised the pilot to perform a 180 degree turn to the left; the pilot executed the turn with the flaps extended then after recognizing that the pilot could land in the field, the CFI advised the pilot to go-around. The pilot stated that the CFI did not advise him to go-around and he applied power after descending too low to continue the simulation; the aircraft impacted terrain approximately 2 seconds after applying full power. The CFI stated the last thing he recalled was that the airplane was 50 feet agl, wings level. Examination of the accident site by FAA revealed that the airplane impacted the field first with the left wing tip, followed by the nose, right wing, then empennage. Examination of the flight controls revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction. The engine was placed on a test stand, started, and found to operate normally.
Probable cause
The inadequate supervision of the private-rated pilot by the certified flight instructor for allowing the airplane to impact terrain during a simulated forced landing procedure to an open field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA046
- Event ID
- 20001212X20289
- Case number
- MIA00LA046
- 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: 99baf3b2528198055526d54a86b6c69cc9d96e85b5e3521b5512c054c9b6913b; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:45:37.215Z.