CHI01LA144 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: overrun during takeoff
From Roscommon Conservation Airport (3RC) to Roscommon Conservation Airport (3RC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA144
- 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 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
- N45943
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roscommon Conservation Airport (3RC), Roscommon, MITo Roscommon Conservation Airport (3RC), Roscommon, MI
- 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 · rejected takeoff
- 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
- Overrun
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was demonstrating a short-field takeoff to his passenger at the time of the accident. The pilot stated that the aircraft did not accelerate normally after rotation and at 50-feet above ground level it became obvious that the aircraft would not clear a tree line off the end of the runway. The pilot elected to land the airplane on the remaining runway, was unable to stop the aircraft prior to the tree line, and collided with the trees. The pilot reported, "The takeoff roll was longer than normal (maybe 200 ft.) which I attributed to our heavy loading (approx. 25 lbs. under max. gross), the rough surface, and perhaps some to the 2220ft. density altitude HTL [Roscommon County Airport] AWOS [Automated Weather Observing System] was reporting." The pilot stated, "I went to Vx [best angle-of-climb airspeed] but we were covering a lot of ground and making very little altitude. I checked the tach which showed 2350-2400 rpm which should have been enough to climb. At about 50ft. agl [above ground level] with 70ft. trees ahead, It became obvious we would not clear them. I did not want to go into the trees airborne, I decided to risk the airplane rather than risk serious injury or worse." The pilot reported, "I closed the throttle and lowered the nose steeply - - flairing [flaring] at the last second, contacting the ground 130ft. from the tree line. The pilot stated, "...consulted the aircraft P.O.H [pilot operating handbook] on down-wind take-off performance. Reconstructing the conditions of our situation that day, and figuring an 8kt. tail-wind, the numbers on the performance chart mirrored the performance we experienced." The pilot reported, "I am certain that we experienced a drastic unexpected wind shift which gave us a tail-wind component."
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain clearance from the tree line. Factors to the accident were the tailwind, the aircraft being near gross weight, the high density altitude, the rough runway condition, and the tree line. An additional factor to the accident was the failure of the pilot to calculate takeoff performance data prior to the takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA144
- Event ID
- 20010607X01086
- Case number
- CHI01LA144
- 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: fb251eb1de8b08f5c9b8cf4b3aaf1447818738ab36bfe64200f40bbb0e65637d; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:56:45.120Z.