CHI02LA102 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Council Bluffs Municipal Airport (CBF) to Council Bluffs Municipal Airport (CBF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA102
- 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
- N53066
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Council Bluffs Municipal Airport (CBF), Council Bluffs, IATo Council Bluffs Municipal Airport (CBF), Council Bluffs, IA
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane collided with the terrain following a loss of control while landing. The student pilot reported that this was his first landing of the day. He reported that while on final approach, at an altitude of 10 to 20 feet above the ground, at an airspeed of 60 to 65 knots, he heard a loud noise. He stated that the noise sounded as if it was coming from the right side of the airplane behind the passenger seat. The student reported, "Shortly after the noise the airplane started to bank hard to the left, like in a large crosswind. The bank became uncontrollable, even with the yoke turned fully to the right." The pilot reported he increased the throttle slightly, and applied right aileron, but the airplane would not recover. He reported the airplane stayed in the left bank until it contacted the grass next to the taxiway. The pilot stated that he thought the stall warning horn sounded just prior to the airplane impacting the terrain. Postaccident inspection of the airplane failed to reveal any failure/malfunction of the airplane and its flight control systems which would have resulted in the reported loss of control . The student pilot reported having 42 hours of total flight time, 1.6 hours of which were solo flight time.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane and the subsequent inadvertent stall. A factor associated with the accident was the student's lack of total experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA102
- Event ID
- 20020409X00478
- Case number
- CHI02LA102
- 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: b7bc1a6400bc71a8f4740e4da711d1b41c1aef255429760b9413c765135355e8; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:45:07.070Z.