ERA09CA541 · Cessna 172P
Pensacola Navy Flying Club Cessna 172P · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during takeoff
From Pensacola International Airport (PNS) to Pensacola International Airport (PNS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA541
- 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
- N55437
- Operator
- Pensacola Navy Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pensacola International Airport (PNS), Pensacola, FLTo Pensacola International Airport (PNS), Pensacola, FL
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot stated that he was performing touch-and-go landings prior to the accident. Shortly after his third landing, the airplane veered left and impacted a taxiway sign. The nose landing gear separated from the airframe and resulted in substantial damage to the firewall. Examination of the airplane's nose landing gear by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that the upper scissor bolt, cotter pin, and castle nut were missing. Winding tire marks were observed on the runway prior to the airplane veering off the runway. Examination of the airplane found no damage to the nose landing gear scissor flange or nose landing gear scissor. In addition, the upper scissor flange bolt was not recovered, nor was any evidence identified that indicated the bolt was in place at the time of separation. An annual inspection was performed 17 days prior to the accident flight. A visual examination of the nose landing gear was performed, but no maintenance was required to be performed. The airplane accumulated 18 hours of flight time after the annual inspection prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to maintain control during landing due to the separation of the nose landing gear upper scissor from the nose gear assembly. Contributing to the accident was the inadequate visual examination performed during the annual inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA541
- Event ID
- 20090929X22942
- Case number
- ERA09CA541
- 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: 3552b2e44ad4917ca678f4acf45594a9b865e1b657f740679b027488cf3a36b7; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:21:40.792Z.