DFW08CA011 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From McAllen Miller International Airport (MFE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08CA011
- 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 172
- 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
- N65591
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McAllen Miller International Airport (MFE), McAllen, TXTo not recorded
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/spin
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 104-hour student pilot was attempting a full-stop landing with the aircraft configured with 20 degrees of flaps and the throttle at idle. The pilot reported that after he flared for the landing, the aircraft pitched-up and began drifting to the left. The pilot responded by applying full-right rudder and retracting the flaps to 10 degrees. This is the last event the pilot can recall in the accident sequence. The airplane impacted the ground in a nose-low attitude, nosed-over and came to rest in the inverted position 150 feet from the left side of Runway 13. An examination of the airplane revealed the nose landing gear had been sheared off and structural damage was sustained to the nose cone, propeller, engine compartment, fuselage, left wing and tail section. The wind at the time of the mishap was reported from 090 degrees at 5 knots. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures prior to the mishap.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during the landing approach resulting in an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08CA011
- Event ID
- 20071114X01794
- Case number
- DFW08CA011
- 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: 90458fe4b6374a8383306aa20d3f5c40b65df0ec6034f9493f61fb5fdac633a7; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:20:56.898Z.