CHI00LA172 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Canton-Plymouth-Mettetal Airport (1D2) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA172
- 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
- N3416E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Canton-Plymouth-Mettetal Airport (1D2)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
- 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(cfi) › Go-around, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The CFI and student were practicing landings when the accident occurred. The CFI stated the student flying and the airplane began to float during the landing. The student then over corrected for the crosswind and once advised of this, the student took out some of the correction. The airplane then began to balloon so the CFI added power and the student corrected for the ballooning. The CFI stated the student then stopped correcting for the crosswind and the airplane was pushed to the left side of the runway. The CFI instructed the student to go around and the student hesitated. The CFI stated he took control of the airplane, added full power, and reduced the flap setting to 20 degrees. He stated, 'I could not get the airspeed fast enough to obtain lift and we settle[d] to the ground in the grass on the left side of the runway.' The airplane contacted soft terrain and nosed over.
Probable cause
the CFI delayed initiating a go-around during the landing. Factors associated with the accident were the student pilot's inadequate handling of the airplane, the crosswind condition, and the soft terrain on which the airplane touched down.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA172
- Event ID
- 20001212X21187
- Case number
- CHI00LA172
- 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: 6aa6a2c966c78babdc83ba280d7e796065b9daaba5a129b7a75cd35049a26b5b; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:46:11.996Z.