LAX08CA102 · Cessna 172S
West Valley Flying Club Cessna 172S · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during takeoff
From Gualala, CA to Palo Alto Airport (PAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08CA102
- 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 172S
- 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
- N21705
- Operator
- West Valley Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gualala, CATo Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, CA
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Operating environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airport manager said the airplane began its takeoff on the 2,500-foot-long runway 13 from the displaced threshold, which is 400 feet from the approach end of the runway. The pilot said he rotated at 55 knots and the airplane lifted off the runway but would not climb. Almost immediately, the stall warning horn began to sound and he lowered the nose to gain speed. The airplane then settled back onto the runway. The pilot reduced the power and began applying brakes to abort the takeoff. The airplane overran the end of the runway, went down a hillside, and collided with trees about 600 feet from the runway. The pilot reported there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision not to use all of the available runway, his premature rotation and failure to obtain and maintain an adequate airspeed to continue the takeoff that resulted in a stall/mush, an aborted takeoff, a runway overrun, and a collision with trees. Contributing to the accident was the short runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08CA102
- Event ID
- 20080506X00617
- Case number
- LAX08CA102
- 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: 4a716dd3e181e839516d73238bc817156ed7e84783b88df6673279fd4d519542; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:36:46.615Z.