ERA09CA048 · Cessna 172 R
Heritage Flight Academy Cessna 172 R · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP) to Groton New London Airport (GON)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA048
- 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 R
- 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
- N91HF
- Operator
- Heritage Flight Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP), Islip, NYTo Groton New London Airport (GON), Groton, CT
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- 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
During landing of the Cessna 172R, the student pilot reduced the power to begin the flare. The airplane ballooned and the pilot added “a little power” to prevent a hard landing. Once on the runway, the pilot applied the brakes to slow the airplane. The airplane turned left, approximately 45 degrees from center line. The pilot reported he applied full brakes and attempted to return the airplane back toward the runway's centerline, but the airplane did not respond and continued to veer towards the edge of the runway. The airplane departed the left side of the runway, impacting some runway signs and markers. The right wheel strut failed, dropping the airplane's right side and pivoting the airplane's tail. The airplane came to rest on the runway, facing back toward the direction of travel. In the National Transportation Safety Board Form 6120.1 submitted by the pilot, "No" was checked for "Was there a Mechanical Malfunction/Failure."
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA048
- Event ID
- 20081111X62037
- Case number
- ERA09CA048
- 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: a24e5d0a5fc1a2f0f9eb9ea5680fc4067a6a8b4c74fadd0dde9974dc179aff75; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:32:25.976Z.