IAD05CA037 · Cessna 172P
Philadelphia Flight Academy Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Cross Keys Airport (17N) to Cross Keys Airport (17N)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05CA037
- 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 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
- N54812
- Operator
- Philadelphia Flight Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cross Keys Airport (17N), Cross Keys, NJTo Cross Keys Airport (17N), Cross Keys, NJ
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 on ground/water
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident took place during the pilot's first supervised solo. The pilot was performing takeoffs and landings on runway 9. The first landing was without incident. During the second landing, the airplane departed the left side of the runway, struck a snow bank, yawed to the left, then nosed over. The pilot stated that the seat was lower in this airplane, than the airplane he had performed his previous training in, and he could not see the runway during the flare. He did not realize the airplane's proximity to the left side of the runway, since he was looking to the right at the taxiway, from which he planned to exit the runway. A post accident inspection of the airplane noted that it had sustained substantial damage. No pre-accident mechanical malfunctions were discovered and control continuity was verified. At the time of the accident the student pilot had accumulated 12.3 hours of total flight time, all of which were in make and model. The reported winds 13 nautical miles northwest, at 1254, were from 110 degrees at 3 knots.
Probable cause
The pilots failure to maintain directional control. Factors contributing to the accident were the pilots lack of experience, and the snow bank.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05CA037
- Event ID
- 20050223X00220
- Case number
- IAD05CA037
- 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. 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: b7660d0ff77fca7dd71af92d801ebbb725f45ad73983865dc962090cfbc47581; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:17:27.079Z.