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MIA08CA104 · Cessna 172M

23 May 2008 · Savannah, GA, United States

Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing

From Lowcountry Regional Airport (KRBW) to Savannah Hilton Head International Airport (KSAV)

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Event

NTSB case
MIA08CA104
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 172M

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
N73471
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Lowcountry Regional Airport (KRBW), Walterboro, SCTo Savannah Hilton Head International Airport (KSAV), Savannah, 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
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
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

  • Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability

Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot stated he was en route on a cross country visual flight rules flight to Florida. He encountered some weather and elected to divert to Savannah, Georgia. He was cleared to land on runway 36 with a left crosswind. The airplane bounced on touchdown and he lost directional control of the airplane. The airplane touched back down on the runway, went off the right side of the runway, collapsed the left main landing gear, and received structural damage to the left wing. The pilot stated there were no mechanical problems with the airplane. The surface winds at the airport were 220-degree at 5 knots and no wind gusts.

Probable cause

The pilot's failure to maintain directional control on landing touchdown with a crosswind.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record MIA08CA104
Event ID
20080605X00795
Case number
MIA08CA104
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: 8ac6450050a418cba054a672ecdfddabebd87933fe3db4490d5435ea6b00dce8; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:43:55.016Z.