MKC89LA059 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Grand Forks International Airport (GFK) to Crookston Municipal Kirkwood Field (CKN)
Event
- NTSB case
- MKC89LA059
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N95975
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Forks International Airport (GFK), Grand Forks, NDTo Crookston Municipal Kirkwood Field (CKN), Crookston, MN
- 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
- Landing · aborted
- 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) › Proper alignment, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Raising of flaps, premature
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE CFI AND STUDENT PILOT HAD COMPLETED 3 TOUCH AND GOES WITHOUT INCIDENT, AND ON THE FOURTH ATTEMPT THE CFI WAS GOING TO FLY JUST ABOVE THE RUNWAY TO ASSIST THE STUDENT JUDGE HIS FLARE HEIGHT. THE LEFT MAIN GEAR TOUCHED DOWN AND A GO AROUND MANUEVER WAS INITIATED. THE STUDENT ADDED FULL POWER AND THE CFI RETRACTED THE FLAPS TO THE 20 DEGREE POSITION. THE ACFT DESCENDED, DRIFTED TO THE LEFT, STRUCK A SNOW BANK AND CAME TO REST INVERTED. A SLIGHT RIGHT CROSS WIND EXISTED AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT. THE PRE-SOLO STUDENT HAD 9 HOURS OF FLIGHT EXPERIENCE, ALL IN THE CESSNA 152.
Probable cause
PREMATURE RAISING OF FLAPS AND THE FAILURE OF THE INSTRUCTOR PILOT TO MAINTAIN RUNWAY ALIGNMENT DURING THE ATTEMPTED GO AROUND.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MKC89LA059
- Event ID
- 20001213X27782
- Case number
- MKC89LA059
- 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: 9c9b180b96c6746cae962c43f1999ffebb80a1135a73587dd0f4ca55d0c2c456; retrieved 2026-09-23T07:53:03.280Z.