FTW03LA177 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: hard landing
From M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport (PLK) to Jones Memorial Airport (3F7)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA177
- 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
- 0
- 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 172M
- 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
- N20679
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport (PLK), Branson, MOTo Jones Memorial Airport (3F7), Bristow, OK
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Stall
- 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, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Raising of flaps, premature
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While en route to Oklahoma City, the pilot decided to permit a pilot-rated passenger to practice touch-and go landings at Jones Memorial Airport, Oklahoma. The pilot-rated passenger, who was manipulating the controls and occupying the left seat, flared high and the airplane bounced twice. On the second bounce, the airplane veered across the runway. The pilot, who was in the right seat, announced that he was taking over the controls of the airplane to initiate a go-round. During the go-around, the pilot turned the airplane left, applied full power, and lifted the flap lever intending to take out 10 degrees of the 40 degrees that was set for landing. However, the pilot inadvertently took out more than 10 degrees. The airplane drifted left of the runway and descended until the right wing tip struck the ground. The pilot made a correction to the left, but the airplane stalled and pivoted nearly 180 degrees before coming to rest approximately 100 yards east of the runway. The pilot reported the wind to be from 120 degrees at 7-10 knots, and the investigator calculated the density altitude to be 3,278 feet at the time of the accident. Examination of the wreckage indicated from the position of the flap-actuator that the flaps were in the retracted position.
Probable cause
The pilot's premature retracting of the flaps, and his failure to maintain airspeed which resulted in an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA177
- Event ID
- 20030714X01090
- Case number
- FTW03LA177
- 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: 23d0ed72834979e1738711fa2fa2fca94f6ba3ae79904e4504b8291526324a56; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:26:43.785Z.