CHI03FA151 · Cessna 172P
Wausau Flying Service Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Sheboygan County Memorial Airport (SBM) to Wausau Downtown Airport (AUW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03FA151
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Instrument 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
- N63319
- Operator
- Wausau Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sheboygan County Memorial Airport (SBM), Sheboygan, WITo Wausau Downtown Airport (AUW), Wausau, WI
- 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
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
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 impacted the terrain following a loss of control on takeoff. There were no known eyewitnesses who saw the takeoff or accident. The person who dropped the pilot and passenger at the airport last saw the airplane as it began to taxi east on the ramp. Ear witnesses reporting hearing an engine go to "full power" followed by the sound of an impact. These ear witnesses reported horizontal visibility at the time was between 30 and 100 feet due to fog. The pilot called the automated weather observation (AWOS) at the departure airport and another airport prior to departure. The wreckage was located on airport property approximately 1,700 feet from the intersection of runways 13/21. Ground scars and the wreckage path leading to the main wreckage was on a heading of 264 degrees. Weather conditions at the departure airport recorded 4 minutes prior to the accident were temperature 8 degrees Celsius, dew point 8 degrees Celsius, visibility 1/4 mile with fog, and 100 feet indefinite ceiling. The pilot did not have an instrument rating. The Transport Canada Carburetor Icing Chart indicates that serious icing at any power setting was possible with the reported temperature and dewpoint spread.
Probable cause
The pilot failed to maintain control of the airplane after encountering instrument meteorological conditions during takeoff. Factors associated with the accident were the low ceiling, fog and lack of instrument rating.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03FA151
- Event ID
- 20030610X00829
- Case number
- CHI03FA151
- 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 2003-06-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9a3cc57d4ee0345d0236965a751315f06263207844afd82163c67c1974af2abb; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:11:28.029Z.