ERA09CA010 · Cessna 172 M
Onawa Cessna 172 M · Accident: runway excursion during takeoff
From Brandy Pond Seaplane Base (5ME) to Dexter Regional Airport (1B0)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA010
- 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 M
- 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
- N20921
- Operator
- Onawa
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brandy Pond Seaplane Base (5ME), Brandy Pond SPB, METo Dexter Regional Airport (1B0), Dexter, ME
- 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
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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
After removing the floats from the Cessna 172M, the pilot taxied from the north end of the grass runway to the south end, to conduct a brake test confirming the brakes were operational. He then back-taxied the airplane to the north end of the approximate 1,200-foot-long, 75-foot-wide runway. During the taxi, the pilot noticed the grass runway was wet and rougher than expected and conducted a high-speed taxi test prior to takeoff to determine handling capability. The pilot conducted a short-field takeoff and the airplane accelerated normally. As the airplane crossed over a high spot, created by a culvert under the runway, the airplane began sliding on the grass towards the left side of the runway. The pilot applied more right aileron, then rudder, and then some right brake. At this point, the pilot decided to abort the takeoff. He brought the throttle to idle, applied the brakes, and shut off the magnetos. As the airplane slowed, the left wing contacted a tree, which pivoted the nose of the airplane into brush as it came to a stop approximately 600 feet beyond the north end of the runway. The left wing sustained substantial damage upon impact with the tree.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the airplane during takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the wet condition of the grass runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA010
- Event ID
- 20081009X65858
- Case number
- ERA09CA010
- 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: 800f93148a10046476e61713088975e11072b46a41860464ad119ad428a32b3e; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:27:06.380Z.