ERA09CA103 · Cessna 172 N
Costa Flying Services Cessna 172 N · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Elmira Corning Regional Airport (ELM) to Corning Painted Post Airport (7N1)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA103
- 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 N
- 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
- N6621D
- Operator
- Costa Flying Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Elmira Corning Regional Airport (ELM), Elmira, NYTo Corning Painted Post Airport (7N1), Corning, NY
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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
During a training flight to practice crosswind takeoffs and landings, with gusty wind conditions on runway 32, a gust of wind lifted the left wing of the airplane during the landing flare. The student pilot inadvertently applied right aileron and the right wing contacted the runway surface, resulting in damage to the right wing and aileron. The certificated flight instructor (CFI) then assumed control and the airplane drifted right of the runway and gained approximately 10 feet of altitude. The throttle control was bent about 45 degrees by the student during the abnormal runway contact, which prevented the CFI from performing an aborted landing maneuver. The damage to the right aileron also prevented the CFI from returning to the runway surface. The airplane landed in the snow next to the runway and neither pilot was injured. The accident airport did not have weather reporting capability; however, airports with weather observations in the local area at the time of the accident recorded winds generally from 250 to 290 degrees at 15 knots with a peak gust of 25 knots. The CFI reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions with the airplane prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing. Contributing to the accident were the gusty wind conditions and the flight instructor's delayed remedial action.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA103
- Event ID
- 20081222X40756
- Case number
- ERA09CA103
- 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: bd81c3b4fa21f32798c78bba79ee61eb7b674696e2040cbc34336ad54c56de96; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:37:35.039Z.