MIA00FA126 · Cessna 177RG
Griffin Flight School Cessna 177RG · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From 15FD to Peachtree City Falcon Field (FFC)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00FA126
- 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
- 1 · 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 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N1997Q
- Operator
- Griffin Flight School
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 15FDTo Peachtree City Falcon Field (FFC), Peachtree City, GA
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Tree(s); Stall
- 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 › Proper alignment, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Pull-up, excessive
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot received a weather briefing before departure and also requested an outlook for the next morning; the briefing specialist advising that he would be better off going tonight. A flashlight was placed on a fencepost midpoint of the runway and a car was positioned at the departure end of the runway facing the approach end with 'dim lights'. After rotation, the pilot-rated witness observed the airplane bank to the left. The airplane then pitched up steep, collided with the tops of trees that bordered the left side of the runway, and 'turned from an almost vertical nose up to a vertical nose down attitude to the right and hit the ground.' Postaccident examination of the flight controls and engine revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction or engine mechanical failure, respectively. Bench testing of the servo fuel injector revealed the fuel flow was erratic and the fuel flow in terms of pounds per hour (pph) was 2.0 pph less than specified. The operator prohibited operations into grass airstrips; the pilot was reportedly previously made aware of this procedure. The pilot also did not meet the operator's prescribed number of complex takeoff and landings before rental.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain runway alignment during the initial climb from the grass airstrip. Also, the excessive pull-up by the pilot and inadvertent stall. Findings in the investigation were 1) in-flight collision with the tops of trees and 2) the pilot's operation of the airplane into a grass airstrip contrary to the operator's procedures.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00FA126
- Event ID
- 20001212X20872
- Case number
- MIA00FA126
- 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 2000-04-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f22723ff18ad5c79d3c995b8f73e757d424eb0920681fb087dd993519be04d53; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:21:55.988Z.