MIA01LA013 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From 9A2 · Knoxville, TN to Brunswick Golden Isles Airport (BQK)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01LA013
- 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 172P
- 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
- N53512
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 9A2 · Knoxville, TNTo Brunswick Golden Isles Airport (BQK), Brunswick, 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
- 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 › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he engaged 10 degrees of flaps, held the brakes and applied full power, but the takeoff roll was extremely bumpy, and the airplane was not accelerating as it should, and the remaining available runway was decreasing. He said there were trees at the end of the runway, but he did not feel that he could have applied the brakes and stop the takeoff roll without running into them, so he continued the takeoff. The pilot further stated that he felt that the airplane's acceleration was being impeded by the cracks on the runway which had grass growing in them, so he decided to transition to a soft field takeoff. He said that initially the climbout was "okay", but the proximity and height of the trees required that he maintain approximately 60 knots, and at that airspeed the aircraft seemed less and less responsive. He said he attempted to lower the pitch to increase the airspeed a couple of times during the climbout, but the aircraft seemed less and less responsive. According to the pilot, the "plane failed to provide the necessary lift in order to continue the climbout, and nose-dived to the ground." A witness stated that he saw the accident aircraft rotate at the midfield point, and it remained in an extreme nose-up attitude during climbout. He said he then saw the aircraft "mush", after which the left wing rose briefly, and the aircraft turned to the left, and descended, impacting the ground. An FAA Inspector, along with representatives from Cessna Aircraft Company, and Textron Lycoming Company, conducted postcrash examinations of the accident aircraft, and no preaccident failures or malfunctions were found with the aircraft structure, the flight control system, or the engine.The inspector further stated that the pilot had elected to take off using an upsloping runway, towards rising terrain, with trees at the end of the runway. The wind velocity was about 4 knots at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain Vs during takeoff/initial climb, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/mush, an uncontrolled descent, and an impact with the ground. Factors in the accident were the pilot's improper preflightplanning/preparation and failure to verify takeoff performance prior to executing a takeoff upslope on a rough/uneven runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01LA013
- Event ID
- 20001212X22216
- Case number
- MIA01LA013
- 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: a9155f75fbdf9644e1a3d2e71d446c6eefb6fa8cac8bd894dd46ad520ab4ab7a; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:21:20.009Z.