ANC07FA054 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: undershoot on approach
From MIR · Merril Field, AK to Wasilla Airport (PAWS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC07FA054
- 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
- 2 · 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
- N52103
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From MIR · Merril Field, AKTo Wasilla Airport (PAWS), Wasilla, AK
- 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
- Undershoot
- 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) › Go-around, delayed
- 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 flight instructor was giving commercial flight instruction to a private pilot in preparation for the commercial flight test when the airplane collided with terrain at an unattended, public airport. The airplane's left wingtip and left main landing gear impacted the ground on the north side of the runway, short of the threshold, as indicated by ground scars containing fragments of the left navigation light, and parts from the left main landing gear. The airplane became airborne again for about 120 feet, leaving no ground scar, and impacted terrain in a near vertical descent, with enough forward motion to fold the engine under the fuselage. The airplane came to rest upright, with the engine intruding into the forward portion of the passenger cabin from underneath, significantly distorting the cabin area, and decreasing survivable space. The landing light and fuel boost pump switches were in the on position, and the landing gear was extended, as in preparation for landing. However, the propeller, mixture, and throttle controls were forward, and the flap handle was up, as if initiating a go-around. The propeller showed signs of high power during impact. An examination of the engine and airframe disclosed no preimpact mechanical anomalies. The position of the airplane and ground scars, as well as the throttle and flap settings, are consistent with a low altitude, delayed attempt to reject the landing and go-around.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to adequately supervise the private pilot (dual student), and his delayed go-around during approach to land. Contributing to the accident was the dual student's misjudged distance/altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC07FA054
- Event ID
- 20070709X00891
- Case number
- ANC07FA054
- 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: e67c9cd47b426d3415631ee9697f911380f247033eca74a1ef0f93130e5ca945; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:32:00.002Z.