NYC08CA230 · Cessna 172 SP
Cessna 172 SP · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Bay Bridge Airport (W29) to Bay Bridge Airport (W29)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08CA230
- 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 172 SP
- 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
- N3504X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bay Bridge Airport (W29), Stevensville, MDTo Bay Bridge Airport (W29)
- 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
- 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 on ground
- 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 172 was demonstrating a simulated engine failure on the downwind leg of a left traffic pattern. He closed the throttle, banked the airplane toward the runway, and trimmed it for "best glide speed with flaps retracted." Approaching the runway environment at an approximately 45-degree angle, the CFI attempted to align the airplane with the runway heading while simultaneously flaring it. He then decided to go around, and added full power; however, the airplane touched down on the south side of the runway, "bounced" towards, then crossed the runway, and exited it on the north side. The airplane then struck in-ground lighting, continued up an embankment, and came to rest in tall grass. The wing spar and firewall were damaged, and no mechanical anomalies were noted with the airplane prior to the accident. Winds reported at a station 7 miles to the west, about the time of the accident, were about 60 degrees from the right of the runway, at 10 knots.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's delayed decision to go around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08CA230
- Event ID
- 20080908X01416
- Case number
- NYC08CA230
- 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: ed1b2a9d0173d90dccf82e4611e93e5940f397565417c940250aad21bbbd4c92; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:10:55.895Z.