CHI08CA011 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident
From Scott AFB/Midamerica Airport (KBLV) to Scott AFB/Midamerica Airport (KBLV)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08CA011
- 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
- N65998
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scott AFB/Midamerica Airport (KBLV), Belleville, ILTo Scott AFB/Midamerica Airport (KBLV), Belleville, 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Fuselage, firewall › Bent
- Pilot of a previous flight › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The rental/instructional airplane was found with substantial damage during a post flight inspection by the airplane operator's maintenance personnel. On the day before the damage was discovered, two pilots, each of whom had separately flown the airplane, reported airplane discrepancies to maintenance personnel. The first pilot reported a discrepancy with the tire sidewall that he noted during his preflight inspection. The airplane was retuned to service after the wheel assembly was replaced and no further inspection was performed. The pilot then flew the airplane and returned without any further reported discrepancies. The second pilot reported a binding in the control column and could not reinstall the gust lock without difficulty during his preflight inspection. Maintenance personnel then grounded the airplane for the day and found damage to the airplane firewall.
Probable cause
the design limits of the aircraft being exceeded by a previous pilot during an unknown phase of flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08CA011
- Event ID
- 20071217X01943
- Case number
- CHI08CA011
- 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: f489cb46b2f5d4c5151b57a7d2f1a20a35df4596876ef9d8de3450fad51ce411; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:23:24.665Z.