CHI06CA053 · Cessna 172R
Cessna 172R · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Poplar Grove Airport (C77) to Morris Municipal Airport James R. Washburn field (C09)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI06CA053
- 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 172R
- 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
- N723PG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Poplar Grove Airport (C77), Belvidere, ILTo Morris Municipal Airport James R. Washburn field (C09), Morris, IL
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/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
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, 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 sustained substantial right wing damage on impact with a snowdrift and terrain when the airplane departed the right side of runway 36 during landing. The pilot stated, "I went around the pattern again and the conclusion ended up the same [too] high and [too] fast but I decided to land this time and the wind blew me off the right side of the [runway]. If I would not have gone off the side of the [runway] I would have gone off the end." The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions with the airplane in reference to the flight. The wind was from 220 degrees at 14 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper in-flight decision to land with a quartering tailwind and not maintaining directional control. Factors were the quartering tailwind and the snowdrift.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI06CA053
- Event ID
- 20060109X00028
- Case number
- CHI06CA053
- 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: fb5b6221cdfda0949a54b61f48e8fd98e93c971121e2a7fbf9d9769b31267d7f; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:11:27.925Z.