ATL02LA013 · Cessna 172S
Cessna 172S · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Sarasota Bradenton International Airport (SRQ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02LA013
- 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
- N24485
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sarasota Bradenton International Airport (SRQ), Sarasota, FLTo 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Company/operator management › Improper training
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flight manuals, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot stated she encountered an autopilot trim failure on initial takeoff climb. She attempted to disconnected the autopilot with the autopilot disconnect red button on the control yoke with negative results. She stated she had not received any training on the autopilot system by the operator. Review of her training records supported her statement. Title 14 CFR Part 91.9 requires the pilot to comply with the operating limitations in the airplane flight manual. The airplane flight manual for the Cessna 172S requires the pilot to commit to memory the four step procedure for autopilot, autopilot trim, or electric trim malfunction. The student pilot did not comply with the written instruction in the flight manual and experienced a loss of aircraft control on landing (porpoise on runway) resulting in a hard landing on the nose gear. Examination of the autopilot before removal from the airplane and at the factory revealed no abnormalities were noted.
Probable cause
The operators failure to ensure adequate training had been provided to the student pilot in autopilot operations, and the student pilot's failure to comply/ follow written instructions (Federal Regulations/172 Skyhawk Information Manual) pertaining to the failure of the autopilot, autopilot trim, or manual electric trim malfunction. This resulted in a reported failure of the autopilot trim to disconnect on initial takeoff for undetermined reasons, loss of aircraft control on landing (porpoise), and subsequent hard landing on the nose gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02LA013
- Event ID
- 20011116X02249
- Case number
- ATL02LA013
- 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: f32f624efd4502257668cb79054cff08d210d79c7259781026607f412fbeb683; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:24:05.454Z.