CHI05CA060 · Cessna 172RG
Cessna 172RG · Accident: hard landing
From Andrews University Airpark (C20) to C20
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05CA060
- 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 172RG
- 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
- N9515B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Andrews University Airpark (C20), Berrien Springs, MITo C20
- 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
- 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
- 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 › Descent, excessive
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
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, piloted by a private pilot receiving instruction from a certified flight instructor (CFI), sustained substantial damage during a hard landing following a simulated loss of engine power during takeoff and subsequent emergency landing after takeoff. The pilot's accident report stated, "On climb out, the air speed was held between 63 and 65 knots (Vy). To simulate an engine failure, the CFI reduced the throttle. Immediately upon noticing the loss of power, I lowered the nose of the aircraft to avoid loss of airspeed and to avoid a wing stall. While maintaining control of the aircraft, altitude was lost. An attempt was made to flare the aircraft before contact with the runway. Subsequently, a hard landing was made, and the aircraft came to a complete stop on the runway." The CFI's accident report stated, "We then made a short field takeoff and during the takeoff I simulated an engine failure. We immediately pushed the nose over but with insufficient airspeed we developed a high sink rate and made a hard landing." The CFI stated that there were no mechanical malfunctions associated with the airplane during the flight. The wind was calm.
Probable cause
The pilot not maintaining airspeed leading to an excessive sink rate during a simulated emergency landing after takeoff. An additional cause was the certified flight instructor's inadequate supervision.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05CA060
- Event ID
- 20050211X00181
- Case number
- CHI05CA060
- 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: eff1d2d3c0b2fddccd3116e8914b0f7c03e24ec8f29d953b61c487e691743482; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:18:45.312Z.