IAD02LA038 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Doylestown Airport (DYL) to Ocean City Municipal Airport (26N)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD02LA038
- 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
- N9847L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Doylestown Airport (DYL), Doylestown, PATo Ocean City Municipal Airport (26N), Ocean City, NJ
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Two Civil Air Patrol pilots departed on the first leg of a cross country proficiency flight. The pilot was seated in the right front seat and the second pilot sat in the left front seat. The second pilot flew the first leg of the trip, but transferred control of the airplane to the pilot after she lost sight of the airport while in the traffic pattern at the destination airport. The pilot assumed control of the airplane, exited the pattern, and reestablished a normal right downwind pattern entry. He then transferred control of the airplane back to the second pilot. Upon turning final, the airplane was high. The pilot again took control of the airplane, flew the approach, and landed on runway 24. When the airplane touched down, it swerved off the right side of the runway and went into a marsh. The pilot said the crosswind component was more severe than what was reported, and was between 45 and 60 degrees off the runway heading. The pilot also said that he did not correct for the crosswind and the perspective that he had from flying in the right seat contributed to the accident. Wind reported at an airport 12 miles away were from 220 degrees at 10 knots gusting to 20 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for wind and his failure to maintain directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD02LA038
- Event ID
- 20020409X00477
- Case number
- IAD02LA038
- 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: bf38c0cfd45b35c3a7b2a1a327dfb1ce3eb57cf982f02e9973c1571b474fbef3; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:03:33.000Z.