LAX08CA234 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Lake Wenatchee State Airport (27W) to Skagit Regional Airport (BVS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08CA234
- 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
- N80849
- Operator
- Joyce L. Rust · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Wenatchee State Airport (27W), Leavenworth, WATo Skagit Regional Airport (BVS), Burlington, WA
- 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 · rejected 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
- 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
- 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 airplane gained speed slowly and halfway down the runway lifted off in ground effect. The pilot noted the airspeed was about 50 knots. When the pilot realized that the airplane was not going to clear obstacles at the end of the runway, she aborted the takeoff and decided to land the airplane on the remaining runway. The airplane overran the end of the runway, traveled downhill, struck a pile of wood, nosed over and came to rest inverted. The pilot had configured the airplane for a short field takeoff with 10 degrees of flaps. The pilot had been to the airport before and had taken summer mountain flying courses. She stated that she over estimated the capabilities of the airplane under the existing altitude, runway conditions, and height of the trees at the end of the runway. The airport elevation was 1,939 feet. The closest weather reporting station indicated that the temperature was 28 degrees Celsius, and the density altitude was calculated to be 3,186 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning and failure to attain a sufficient airspeed to continue the takeoff. A contributing factor was the high density altitude and short runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08CA234
- Event ID
- 20081003X17533
- Case number
- LAX08CA234
- 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: 9fb4bb077ab4be00da676fb848deb7fb8f5f14bbbdb370755994cb79604b8ff2; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:17:08.083Z.