ERA09CA160 · Cessna 172M
Rochester Air Center Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport (ROC) to Le Roy Airport (5G0)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA160
- 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 172M
- 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
- N3554Q
- Operator
- Rochester Air Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport (ROC), Rochester, NYTo Le Roy Airport (5G0), Le Roy, 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that a strong gust of wind pushed the airplane off the right side of the runway and into a snow bank during an aborted landing to runway 28. The airplane received damage to both wings and the vertical stabilizer. The pilot had also aborted two previous landing attempts. Winds reported at a nearby airport, about the time of the accident, were from 200 degrees at 14 knots, gusting to 22 knots. According to the airplane's owner's manual, the crosswind limit for pilots with "average" ability was 15 knots. The pilot reported no deficiencies with the performance and handling of the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for a crosswind during an aborted landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to land in gusting crosswinds in excess of the manufacturer's recommended crosswind limit.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA160
- Event ID
- 20090210X90526
- Case number
- ERA09CA160
- 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: be03152c2343565983228a9934120abb89078034559c9f69560133e859f275a8; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:44:42.355Z.