MIA04FA007 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Olive Branch Airport (OLV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA04FA007
- 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
- 1 · 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 172N
- 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
- N75510
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Olive Branch Airport (OLV), Olive Branch, MSTo 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Stall/spin
- 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(vso), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses stated that the airplane had just taken off from runway 18, and during the initial climb they saw it in a nose-high pitch attitude. They further stated that about 75 to 100 feet in the air they saw the airplane suddenly turn to the east, and descend straight down, impacting the ground. Examination of the wreckage showed that the airplane's flaps had been set to 20 degrees, and no preaccident anomalies were noted to exist with the airplane's airframe, flight controls, or engine. At the time of the accident, the student had accumulated a total of 39.7 hours total flight experience, and he was conducted his third solo flight. The student's flight instructor had specified in an endorsement he had provided to the student for solo flight, that solo flights be performed in a Cessna 172 , and that the flights be conducted at the Olive Branch Airport, when crosswinds were less than 5 knots. The reported surface winds at the Olive Branch Airport, Olive Branch, Mississippi, were from 270 degrees at 8 knots, gusting to 14 knots. The pilot's operating handbook for the airplane specifies that flap settings in excess of 10 degrees are not approved for takeoff.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain airspeed (Vso), which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin, an uncontrolled descent, and an impact with terrain. A factor in the accident was his failure to follow the airplane's operating checklist and retract the wing flaps for takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA04FA007
- Event ID
- 20031024X01811
- Case number
- MIA04FA007
- 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: 5e6a7d6dfe16c7d4bc115b6af537aa8ce5e4be5c74e797f6ad55eea6fe8c5df2; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:51:22.391Z.