NYC05LA070 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Pittsburgh/Butler Regional Airport (BTP) to Warren Airpark (7PA1)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC05LA070
- 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 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N7545V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pittsburgh/Butler Regional Airport (BTP), Butler, PATo Warren Airpark (7PA1), Warren, PA
- 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
- 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 › Checklist, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Cessna 177RG departed the airport, proceeded in a northeasterly direction, and climbed to approximately 3,500 feet msl. About 8 minutes prior to the accident, the airplane began a descent. The airplane circled the airport once, and turned onto final approach approximately 3/4 mile from and about 300 feet above the runway threshold. The airplane touched down at the start of the runway, slightly left of centerline, and traveled at approximately 64 knots ground speed. The airplane then encountered a "heavy gust of wind" from the left, crossed over the centerline, and departed the right side of the runway, about 1,000 feet from the touchdown point while traveling at approximately 52 knots. The landing was aborted; however, the airplane did not clear a treeline about 480 feet southeast of the runway. At approximately 55 knots, the airplane impacted 50-foot tall trees, and then came to rest on the ground inverted. Examination of the airplane revealed the flaps were retracted, and no preimpact failures or malfunctions were identified. The Cessna 177RG Pilot's Operating Handbook called for 20 degrees of flaps and 65 knots indicated airspeed while executing a balked landing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow the balked landing checklist while attempting to abort a landing. Factors in the accident were his failure to maintain directional control during the landing, and a gust of wind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC05LA070
- Event ID
- 20050420X00485
- Case number
- NYC05LA070
- 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: 43ac74b791308de06d7f2283e321c56752f616e41b240b16b53fc553063526ee; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:04:55.355Z.