CHI01LA051 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From 49B to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA051
- 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 172M
- 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
- N13584
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 49BTo 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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 on ground/water
- 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 › Aborted takeoff, discontinued
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted the terrain following a loss of control during takeoff. The pilot reported that during his preflight, he noticed the elevator trim was set "all the way to the bottom", so he set it for takeoff. The pilot completed the aircraft preflight, started the engine, and taxied to the runway for takeoff. The pilot stated that during the takeoff roll at 75 to 80 miles per hour, he "slowly pulled back on the control wheel and the plane would not lift off. After the midfield point it still would not lift off. So I proceeded to pull power at which time it lifted up and came back down and bounced one more time before I pushed in power." He reported the airplane went off the right side of the runway and flew over the runway and approach lights before it impacted the terrain and the nose gear collapsed. Inspection of the airplane revealed the elevator trim tab and the cockpit trim indicator were not consistent with each other. When the pilot aligned the indicator for a takeoff setting, the actual trim surface was in a full nose down position.
Probable cause
The pilot failed to maintain control of the airplane during takeoff and he discontinued an aborted takeoff once initiated. Factors associated with the accident were the inaccurate elevator trim indicator, the pilot's failure to verify the trim setting, rotation was restricted, directional control was not maintained, and the berm which the airplane contacted.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA051
- Event ID
- 20001226X45480
- Case number
- CHI01LA051
- 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: 46d93e8520d9a6dd1770e63727b713b875f87a4495bbb208ed1aeb60e591dca3; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:16:28.803Z.