NYC08LA049 · Cessna 172N
Washington Flying Club Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI) to Montgomery County Airpark (GAI)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08LA049
- 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
- N259ER
- Operator
- Washington Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI), Gaithersburg, MDTo Montgomery County Airpark (GAI), Gaithersburg, MD
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- 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
- Dual student › Directional control, 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 12-hour student pilot and the certificated flight instructor (CFI) were conducting their first flight together. The student had completed one takeoff, traffic pattern circuit, and landing, and initiated another takeoff in response to the CFI's instruction. After lift off, the airplane began to veer to the left, and despite verbal commands by the CFI, the drift and turn continued. The CFI then tried to physically intervene on the flight controls, but was initially resisted by the student. The CFI recognized that they could not avoid a treeline located 80 feet from the runway edge, so he leveled the wings and attempted to shut down the engine. The airplane impacted the trees approximately 10 feet above ground level. Subsequent to the accident, the CFI stated that he normally emphasized transfer of control in the preflight briefing, but he did not discuss that with this student. The surface weather observation reported winds of 5 knots. The accident was the fifth one in 24 years that involved the same treeline. While the treeline was coincident with the runway proximity limit specified in the advisory circular for airport design, the airport's 2002 improvement plan prescribed an increase in the distance between the treeline and the runway edge. As of July 2009, the treeline had not been relocated.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during an attempted touch-and-go. Contributing to the accident was the instructor's delay in taking remedial action, and the presence of trees in proximity to the side of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08LA049
- Event ID
- 20081003X17816
- Case number
- NYC08LA049
- 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: cee7c6d3ca3ba80a10a38a4b7a622078fe68721c7fad0866346eff0db0f5f040; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:21:05.445Z.