NYC02FA012 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Allenholm Airport (VT26) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02FA012
- 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
- 3 · 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 172
- 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
- N8255B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Allenholm Airport (VT26), South Hero, VTTo 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and three passengers were departing runway 18, a 2,000-foot long, 40-foot wide, turf runway. According to a passenger, the airplane lifted off the ground about halfway down the runway, settled back onto the runway, and lifted off again near the end of the runway. The airplane began to climb and everything seemed normal until the airplane climbed above the trees and encountered a sudden wind gust. At that point, the airplane began to sink, the right wing lifted and the nose dropped. The airplane impacted the ground approximately 510 feet south, and 100 feet east of the extended center of the runway and a post crash fire ensued. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any pre-impact malfunctions. Winds reported at an airport about 11 miles west-northwest of the accident site about 30 minutes prior to the accident, were from 280 degrees at 10 knots, with 15 knot gusts, variable from 250 to 310 degrees. An estimated weight and balance calculation revealed the accident flight was conducted at a weight near the airplane maximum gross weight.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during the takeoff. Factors in this accident were wind gusts and the airplane's high gross weight condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02FA012
- Event ID
- 20011023X02131
- Case number
- NYC02FA012
- 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: e2d188f1cb0fe8853ca1f7e753447b0a8ac4f9b6ce0d243ccaf0b94338610847; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:19:44.041Z.