DEN07CA096 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Manhattan Regional Airport (MHK) to Manhattan Regional Airport (MHK)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07CA096
- 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
- N65685
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Manhattan Regional Airport (MHK), Manhattan, KSTo Manhattan Regional Airport (MHK)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 in flight
- 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(cfi) › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departure from runway 03, the flight instructor noted a military UH-60 helicopter operating near the runway. The helicopter maneuvered away from runway 03, and the airplane departed. As the airplane reached the traffic pattern altitude (1,900 feet mean sea level), the instructor overheard a second military helicopter pilot report he was on base leg for runway 03. During the legs of the traffic pattern, the instructor reported his position and intentions on the common traffic advisory frequency (CTAF). The instructor reported on CTAF that he was turning for a one-half mile final to runway 03, and a military helicopter at the approach end of runway 03 appeared to proceed upwind. Based on his observations, the flight instructor continued on the visual approach to land. Approximately 200 feet above ground level (agl), the instructor noted that the helicopter did not depart, but was hovering 200 to 300 feet agl approximately 2/3 down the runway. Concerned about the risk of a mid-air collision during a go-around, the instructor decided to continued the landing. As the airplane crossed the runway 03 threshold, the instructor realized the helicopter was hovering at 200 feet agl near the 1,000 foot runway markers. The instructor reported, "As the main wheels touched down the aircraft was caught in a gust of wind from the outflow of the helicopter's rotor wash. The aircraft ballooned up approximately two feet above the runway and immediately caught down flow from the rotor wash which forced the aircraft to the ground. The main wheels struck the runway, followed by the nose wheel which collapsed on impact. The aircraft skidded approximately 25 feet before coming to rest."
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain control of the airplane during the landing. A contributing factor was the inadvertent encounter with the military helicopter's rotor wash.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07CA096
- Event ID
- 20070629X00845
- Case number
- DEN07CA096
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2007-05-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 349d7d77e2ba28800cd2dd3dd679f0c98a09208e7afde897c2f347721f719952; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:48:13.353Z.