CHI03LA135 · Cessna R172K
Cessna R172K · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Kirksville Regional Airport (IRK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA135
- 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 R172K
- 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
- N9908V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kirksville Regional Airport (IRK), Kirksville, MOTo 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/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 › Aborted landing, not performed
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Maneuver to avoid obstructions, 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 airplane sustained substantial damage when it ran off the runway while landing. At the time of departure, the automated surface observing system (ASOS) on the airport was reporting winds 270 degrees magnetic at 9 knots. The pilot reported receiving the ASOS report prior to departure. About 15 minutes into the flight the pilot reported he encountered "extreme vertical turbulence" while on downwind. The ASOS reported the wind as 320 degrees at 23 knots gusting to 38 knots at 1755 cdt. The pilot landed on runway 18 and reported having difficulty braking and subsequently veered the airplane off the right edge of the runway 300 feet from the runways end. The pilot stated his decision to steer the aircraft off the runway was due to his approximation that the aircraft would collide with the approach lighting system 400 feet from the end of runway. The nose landing gear collapsed and the left wing struck the terrain as the airplane slid sideways after exiting the runway. The pilot reported he realized that other options, such as continuing to another airport or landing on runway 36, might have prevented the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper in-flight decision to land with a tailwind and failure to perform an aborted landing, resulting in the pilots decision to control the aircraft off of the right edge of the runway to avoid obstructions. Contributing factors were the tailwind, the sudden wind shift, the turbulence, and the obstacles.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA135
- Event ID
- 20030528X00736
- Case number
- CHI03LA135
- 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: b42366edb7a4c410be2f123e7534c607c83e61c3bdc6cfa0f1a9f99730e4ba73; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:17:57.544Z.