LAX02LA184 · Cessna 172S
Cessna 172S · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Monterey Regional Airport (MRY) to Columbia Airport (O22)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA184
- 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
- N748SP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monterey Regional Airport (MRY), Monterey, CATo Columbia Airport (O22), Columbia, CA
- 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 · roll/run
- 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 › Checklist, not complied with
- Pilot in command › Elevator trim, incorrect
- Pilot in command › Lack of familiarity with aircraft
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane veered off the runway during takeoff; the nose gear collapsed aft and damaged the firewall and fuselage. While in the run-up area the pilot went through her checklist, and received an altitude alert message and a horn went off. She said she pushed every button she could to turn the alert off, but was unsuccessful. She taxied back to the hangar where her flight instructor popped the circuit breaker for the autopilot, which was giving the alert message. Once it was turned off, she taxied out to takeoff. The pilot began the takeoff roll and attempted to rotate, but the control yoke was not effective. The pilot slammed on the brakes, but the airplane departed the right side of the runway. The airplane had full nose down trim after the accident. The pilot said she did not know that she had to manually recycle the trim after pulling the circuit breaker. Section four of Supplement 15 to the Pilot Operating Handbook (POH) described normal procedures for the use of the autopilot. Paragraph A.2 contained a warning that the manual electric trim and autopilot were inoperative if the circuit breaker was pulled. Paragraph eight instructed the pilot to manually set the trim to the takeoff position. Section four of the POH described normal procedures. The before takeoff checklist instructed the pilot to insure that the elevator trim was set for takeoff.
Probable cause
The pilot was unfamiliar with the airplane's systems and failed to set the elevator trim in accordance with the published checklist.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA184
- Event ID
- 20020607X00831
- Case number
- LAX02LA184
- 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: 007ad2d98de19c5e0b95a91ff31dce841f113f4a3335aa39c2507b95209c1d71; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:52:19.695Z.