CHI01IA047 · Cessna 172S
Modern Aero… Cessna 172S · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Saint Cloud Regional Airport (STC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01IA047
- 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
- Incident
- 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 172S
- 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
- N582SP
- Operator
- Modern Aero
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Saint Cloud Regional Airport (STC)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
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Manufacturer › Inadequate quality control
- Material defect
- Propeller system/accessories, blade › Fatigue
- Propeller system/accessories, blade › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The outer 14 inches of one of the propeller blades separated during takeoff at an altitude of 400 to 500 feet above the runway. The certified flight instructor was able to land the airplane on a parallel taxiway without incident. The propeller had 236 hours total time at the time of the incident. Metallurgical examination revealed that about 60 percent of the fracture surface contained features typical of fatigue cracking which emanated from the flat face of the blade arm, near the trailing edge. The examination also revealed the microstructure was normal with the exception that the grain flow pattern followed the surface of the scallop region and not the surface of the blade. Chromium present in the scalloped region of the fracture and not on the fatigued surface indicated that the chromic anodized solution penetrated the indication during the anodizing process prior to the blade being painted.
Probable cause
the fatigue failure of the propeller blade during the initial takeoff climb. The failure was a result of a material defect, which occurred during the manufacturing process and the manufacturers failure to detect the defect.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01IA047
- Event ID
- 20001220X45450
- Case number
- CHI01IA047
- 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: 76d0c8bbe1740079b576ad86d4cdcd16e62307d4bc3e7e6f4f1fb57e5ca9edf6; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:17:18.327Z.