NYC08CA037 · Cessna 172N
Pegasus Air Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Barnwell Regional Airport (BNL) to Statesboro Bulloch County Airport (TBR)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08CA037
- 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 172N
- 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
- N6492E
- Operator
- Pegasus Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Barnwell Regional Airport (BNL), Barnwell, SCTo Statesboro Bulloch County Airport (TBR), Statesboro, GA
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 › Flare, 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
The 27-hour student pilot of the Cessna 172N successfully completed the first leg of a solo cross country flight, and returned for landing on runway 23 at his airport of origin. The pilot reported that on final approach, he was lined up correctly, was at the appropriate speed, and that everything "felt good." He also reported that when he began the flare, a gust of wind "caught the back of the plane," and lifted the tail. The pilot believed that he had landed nose gear first. He completed the rollout and taxied to the terminal without further incident. The pilot did not experience any preimpact failures or malfunctions with the airplane, and a postaccident examination of the airplane revealed damage to the propeller, nose landing gear and firewall. The weather observation at the airport about the time of the accident recorded winds from 220 degrees at 4 knots.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain a proper flare at touchdown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08CA037
- Event ID
- 20080411X00459
- Case number
- NYC08CA037
- 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: 3ba5b8d597249f4c7dd9c036411b3682c2046e81dc35670bae8fc2a3572ac07f; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:16:18.471Z.