IAD03LA029 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident during initial climb
From Hampton Roads Executive Airport (PVG) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD03LA029
- 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 172
- 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
- N6312E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hampton Roads Executive Airport (PVG), HAMPTON ROADS, VATo 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Ice/frost removal from aircraft, inadequate
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 spent 1 1/2 hours prior to the flight brushing snow from the leading edges of the airplane's wings, but had left the remainder of snow pushed back on the wings. On takeoff, when the airplane reached an altitude of 300 feet agl, the airplane's stall horn activated. The pilot lowered the nose of the airplane to prevent a stall, but the stall horn continued to sound. She then executed a 180-degree turn back toward the runway, but was unable to reach it, and landed hard in a field adjacent to the airport. A witness, a Federal Aviation Administration Designated Pilot Examiner, saw the airplane taxiing through the ramp area and recalled that both of the airplane's wings were nearly covered with 4-inch tall chunks of snow and ice. The witness also reported that there was at least a 1/4-inch layer of ice and snow on the wings when she arrived to the scene of the accident. In a written statement, the pilot reported that she, "...failed to adequately remove some snow from the top of the wings." After the accident, the pilot voluntarily sought and received training regarding frost, icing, and snow and its effects on aircraft performance.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to adequately remove snow and ice from the airplane's wings prior to takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD03LA029
- Event ID
- 20030127X00116
- Case number
- IAD03LA029
- 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: a53c06104496faebb664e7ecfb205985bc82e5d7782ba9d6272781a5d179ed5f; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:39:18.301Z.