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ATL03LA092 · Cessna 172H

13 May 2003 · Somerville, TN, United States

Cessna 172H · Accident: undershoot during landing

From Fayette County Airport (FYE) to Somerville, TN

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Event

NTSB case
ATL03LA092
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 172H

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
N1748F
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Fayette County Airport (FYE), Somerville, TNTo Somerville, TN
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
Landing
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
Undershoot
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 › Airspeed, misjudged
  • Pilot in command › Distance, misjudged

Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

While on approach to land on runway 01, the airplane propeller caught a berm and undershot the runway 10 feet of the paved surface. Since repairs were underway from the edge of the runway-paved surface, several feet of dirt had been removed on the approach end of the runway. The pilot reported that the nose wheel collapsed and the airplane skidded in and stopped about 50 feet down the runway. Examination of the airplane showed a buckled fuselage, nose gear damage, firewall and propeller damage. No mechanical problems were revealed during the post-accident examination of the airplane.

Probable cause

The pilot's misjudged approach airspeed and distance which resulted in an undershoot of the runway and collision with terrain.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ATL03LA092
Event ID
20030516X00675
Case number
ATL03LA092
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: ac29b0fa69d329be85160404e047b205260e0ea2e3ee93bf711b7a74f60b8181; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:18:32.046Z.