DEN03LA072 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB) to 00V · Colo. Springs, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA072
- 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
- N54202
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB), Pueblo, COTo 00V · Colo. Springs, CO
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Dual student › Altitude/clearance, not obtained/maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that while making an approach to the runway, the airplane encountered wind shear. The instructor told the student pilot to go-around. The student pilot added power and the airplane climbed "just above the runway." The flight instructor said the airplane would not climb. The instructor pilot said, "The nose wheel hit a small hill on the (approach) end of the runway and flipped us over." The airplane sustained damage to the propeller, engine cowling, nose gear, firewall, and both wings. Later, after the airplane had been recovered, the instructor pilot noted that the flaps were up. The instructor pilot reported that on approach, the flaps were in the full down position. An examination of the airplane revealed no pre-existing anomalies that could have contributed to the accident. The reported winds at the Colorado Springs Municipal Airport, 225 degrees at 14 nautical miles, 4 minutes after the accident occurred, were 140 degrees at 5 knots.
Probable cause
the student pilot's failure to obtain and maintain adequate altitude during the go-around. Factors contributing to the accident were the encountered windshear, the student pilot's premature raising of the flaps, the instructor pilot's inadequate supervision, and the berm.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA072
- Event ID
- 20030428X00579
- Case number
- DEN03LA072
- 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: 2e91ec2a5fcea68eb845e32d7b3e3036d4ec1cc242430cfd71cf9bcba7e3005f; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:21:27.456Z.