CEN09CA459 · Cessna 172P
USAFA Aero Club Cessna 172P · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach
From USAFA, CO to USAFA, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA459
- 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 172P
- 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
- N52298
- Operator
- USAFA Aero Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From USAFA, COTo USAFA, CO
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
The airplane was landing at the destination airport in gusty wind conditions. The commercial pilot reported that the wind was aligned predominately down the runway with gusts approximately 10 knots above the steady state winds. When in the flare to land, the airplane would not settle to the runway normally. The pilot held the landing attitude and waited for the airplane to touch down. When the airplane floated past the pilot's planned touchdown zone, the pilot initiated a go-around. When the pilot selected full throttle and set a pitch attitude for the climb out, the airplane's stall warning horn came on. The pilot lowered the pitch and retracted wing flaps from 40 degrees to approximately 20 degrees. The airplane stalled, and the left wing and propeller contacted the runway. The airplane departed the left side of the runway and came to rest in an upright position. An examination of the airplane following the accident revealed that the left wing near the wing tip was bent upward and the firewall was buckled.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain a safe flying airspeed resulting in an inadvertent stall during the go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA459
- Event ID
- 20090723X51140
- Case number
- CEN09CA459
- 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: 0d21b8b1ac3ec4736c816defe2db38563b23566b31cbcdc2357b25fbe28c101d; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:59:18.630Z.