NYC08CA118 · Cessna 172SP
Cessna 172SP · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing on approach
From Lincoln Park Airport (N07) to Lincoln Park Airport (N07)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08CA118
- 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 172SP
- 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
- N107MA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lincoln Park Airport (N07), Lincoln Park, NJTo Lincoln Park Airport (N07)
- 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 go-around
- Defining eventThe 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated flight instructor (CFI), of the Cessna 172SP, stated that the purpose of the dual flight was local air work practice, followed by takeoff and landing practice. After one high approach that terminated in a go-around, then a successful landing, the student pilot departed and positioned the airplane at a higher altitude than normal on the final approach. The CFI took the controls and demonstrated a sideslip maneuver to the student. Once the airplane lost some altitude, the CFI "…turned over the controls to the student and asked him to land the airplane." The touchdown speed was higher than normal, so the CFI queried the student whether the power was reduced, then instructed him to apply aerodynamic braking. The airplane did not appear to be slowing, so the CFI attempted to go around. He applied power and pulled back on the yoke in an attempt to take off, then saw the airport perimeter fence approaching, and felt a "jolt". The left main landing gear impacted the airport perimeter fence off the departure end of runway 1, then the airplane impacted a guardrail, and came to rest inverted on an adjacent road. The tailcone separated from the fuselage just aft of the cargo compartment. Neither pilot was injured. The CFI reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions of the airplane prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The certificated flight instructor's delayed decision to go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08CA118
- Event ID
- 20080321X00353
- Case number
- NYC08CA118
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: f6fc247f6cb9782e4a7abc1506b82e9d14743cf2285cbdaebac3428d26692733; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:26:51.076Z.