ATL04CA129 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From Short Creek Airport (8TN7) to Springfield Robertson County Airport (M91)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04CA129
- 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 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
- N5153E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Short Creek Airport (8TN7), Dover, TNTo Springfield Robertson County Airport (M91), Springfield, 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
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Flight into adverse weather, initiated
- Weather condition › Thunderstorm
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certified flight instructor (CFI) was conducting an instructional flight and landed at the intermediate stop with out incident. Prior to departing on the return flight, the CFI checked internet weather, and observed "bad weather" approaching the departure airport. He and the student pilot departed from runway 25 performing a soft field take off. Immediately after rotation the CFI leveled the airplane to increase airspeed. The CFI stated, "this took longer than usual due to wind shear." The airplane reached 60 knots and they were between 25 to 50 feet on initial take off climb, when they encountered a "severe cross wind gust of an estimated 40 to 50 knots from the right putting the wings in a near vertical attitude." The CFI applied rudder and aileron, and the airplane collided with the trees and the ground. Another pilot who landed at the airport before the accident airplane departed stated, black clouds were visible in the distance and there were thunderstorms in the area.
Probable cause
The certified flight instructor initiated flight into thunderstorm activity that resulted in a loss of control and the subsequent collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04CA129
- Event ID
- 20040616X00808
- Case number
- ATL04CA129
- 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: fffdd37b9697a011d6c35de47cf39918c1213d071580c31a988665fd30af7136; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:21:18.296Z.