WPR09CA107 · Cessna 152
Midstate Aviation Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Bowers Field (KELN) to Bowers Field (KELN)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09CA107
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N95606
- Operator
- Midstate Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bowers Field (KELN), Ellensburg, WATo Bowers Field (KELN), Ellensburg, WA
- 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
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot, who was practicing touch-and-go landings in calm wind conditions, inadvertently landed near the left edge of the runway. During the landing roll, he did not correct back to the runway centerline. Soon after adding power for takeoff, the airplane veered off the left side of the runway. By the time the pilot was able to bring the airplane to a stop, it had traveled about 900 feet over uneven terrain and the nose landing gear strut had collapsed, resulting in substantial damage to the firewall. There was no evidence of any anomaly or malfunction in the airplane's nosewheel steering or rudder system.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the takeoff roll.Contributing to the accident was the student pilot's decision to initiate the takeoff with the airplane positioned near the left edge of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09CA107
- Event ID
- 20090203X42525
- Case number
- WPR09CA107
- 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: 66301163372ac32919c5a96d5928cd61fe35a828fc31e96618217906629dbe79; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:43:39.741Z.