CHI01LA060 · Cessna 172S
Cessna 172S · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Sioux Falls Regional Airport (FSD) to Sioux Falls Regional Airport (FSD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA060
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- N727SP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sioux Falls Regional Airport (FSD), Sioux Falls, SDTo Sioux Falls Regional Airport (FSD), Sioux Falls, SD
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Sioux Falls, SD, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot lost directional control of the aircraft during a takeoff run while practicing solo touch-and-go landings. The pilot stated that after a successful landing he initiated a takeoff and, "as I added power the airplane seemed to shimmy at which time I tried to correct the plane. As I was unable to correct I powered back to idle and tried to stop which is when the plane went off the left side of the runway and hit a windrow of snow." The pilot reported, "Hitting the snow made the planes [plane's] tail lift and spin around which made the right wing hit the ground causing damage." The pilot stated that his total time in all aircraft was 24.1-hours and all hours were flown in the accident airplane make and model. The pilot reported that he had accumulated 1.4-hours of pilot-in-command time.
Probable cause
Aircraft directional control not being maintained by the student pilot during the takeoff roll. Factors to the accident were the snow bank and the student pilot's lack of total experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA060
- Event ID
- 20010111X00288
- Case number
- CHI01LA060
- 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: c6018356c43050110ac9ea0ccf80187020dce037185d721cef6af9b310c3c243; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:14:51.095Z.