MIA02LA132 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: overrun during takeoff
From Pickens County Airport (LQK) to Aiken Regional Airport (AIK)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02LA132
- 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 172N
- 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
- N737CQ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pickens County Airport (LQK), Pickens, SCTo Aiken Regional Airport (AIK), Aiken, SC
- 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
- Overrun
- 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 preflight, improper
- Pilot in command › Checklist, not followed
- Pilot in command › Removal of control/gust lock(s), not performed
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 stated that he had not removed the gust lock and during the takeoff roll, as he was ready to rotate, he noticed the mistake and tried to abort the takeoff, but the airplane continued on exiting the end of the runway and colliding with trees.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper preflight planning/preparation that resulted in the airplane's gust lock being left installed which resulted in a loss of control during the takeoff roll and damage to the airplane when it exited the departure end of the runway and collided with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02LA132
- Event ID
- 20020716X01138
- Case number
- MIA02LA132
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-07-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: dd3039efdfe9fa8ca2f1a1e8923ab54e9aaf3bd5f8206798f2a05158ac519602; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:44:33.702Z.