DFW08LA238 · Cessna R172K
Alliance Flight Training Cessna R172K · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Lake County Airport (LXV) to FTG · Denver, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08LA238
- 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 R172K
- 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
- N736LN
- Operator
- Alliance Flight Training
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake County Airport (LXV), Leadville, COTo FTG · Denver, CO
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor was demonstrating how to maneuver at about 400 feet to 1,000 feet above mountainous terrain using updrafts on the west face of the ridge line to improve climb performance. Another airplane on the same route, about five minutes ahead of them, had reported that they were getting updrafts that gave them occasional climb rates of up to 500 to 600 feet per minute. The accident airplane was headed toward rising terrain and climbing at approximately 400 to 500 feet per minute when suddenly the airplane quit climbing and the stall warning sounded. The flight instructor took over the controls, lowered the flaps, maintained full engine power at approximately 2,700 rpm, and made a crash landing at approximately 12,000 feet mean sea level on the upslope of the mountain. The airplane struck terrain with the wings level approximately 500 feet below the crest of the mountain ridge and came to rest inverted 50 feet from the initial impact point. A subsequent examination of the airplane showed no prexisting anomalies.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain control of the airplane while maneuvering at low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08LA238
- Event ID
- 20081004X12028
- Case number
- DFW08LA238
- 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. 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: 8e9b510fac5ff71116a623c0370a90b13c76ebc414cb1d4b29641e382608a8df; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:22:48.295Z.