IAD01LA040 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Reading Regional Airport (Carl A Spaatz Field) (RDG) to Williamsport Regional Airport (IPT)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD01LA040
- 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 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
- N65630
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reading Regional Airport (Carl A Spaatz Field) (RDG), Reading, PATo Williamsport Regional Airport (IPT), Williamsport, PA
- 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 › Climb, not attained
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Raising of flaps, premature
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During landing, the airplane touched down and drifted right towards the infield. The pilot aborted the landing, but the airplane did not climb, and departed the left side of the runway. The stall warning horn sounded, the airplane struck a fence, and then came to rest on a railroad bed. The pilot stated that when he aborted the landing, he retracted the flaps completely from their fully deployed, 30-degree position. The pilot reported that the airplane reached a height of no more than 10 - 15 feet after he applied full throttle. According to the airplane's Information Manual, the flaps are to be retracted incrementally; to the 10-degree position until obstacles are cleared, and not fully retracted until the airplane reaches a safe altitude and 60 knots indicated airspeed. According to the FAA Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge: "The effect of torque increases in direct proportion to engine power, airspeed, and airplane attitude. If the power setting is high, the airspeed slow, and the angle of attack high, the effect of torque is greater. During takeoffs and climbs, when the effect of torque is most pronounced, the pilot must apply sufficient right rudder pressure to counteract the left-turning tendency and maintain a straight takeoff path."
Probable cause
The pilot's premature raising of flaps resulting in his failure to establish a climb and his failure to maintain directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD01LA040
- Event ID
- 20010416X00749
- Case number
- IAD01LA040
- 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, coordinates. 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: 64b4ce551d3e4664b966444f10de109ac1fb7c3f509ce66fcc11327a2ce94fc0; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:59:35.051Z.