ERA09CA539 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Penn Valley Airport (SEG) to Seamans Field (9N3)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA539
- 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
- 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
- N5123E
- Operator
- Yankoski Robert D
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Penn Valley Airport (SEG), Selinsgrove, PATo Seamans Field (9N3), Factoryville, PA
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated flight instructor (CFI) and private pilot receiving instruction were conducting an instrument approach to a 2,500-foot long runway in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The pilot receiving instruction was at the controls. As the airplane reached the minimum descent altitude, the pilot initiated a circle-to-land on the opposite runway. The CFI then said, "no," took control of the airplane, and conducted a "steep" turn to land on the approach runway. The pilot stated that they "had too much airspeed and floated almost halfway down the runway." Upon touchdown, the pilot reported "hydroplaning" on the wet runway. The airplane departed the end of the runway, slid down a grassy hill, and came to rest in a ditch, resulting in substantial damage to the firewall. The CFI stated "there was some confusion" regarding who was at the controls during touchdown, and he "should have taken over sooner" than he did. The pilot and the CFI reported no mechanical malfunctions or failures. The nearest weather reporting station, located approximately 15 nautical miles north of the accident site, reported winds from 310 degrees at 3 knots and 10 miles visibility around the time of the accident. The report also indicated that rain had ended about 15 minutes prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's delayed decision to take control of the airplane and execute a missed approach. Contributing to the accident was the lack of communication between the certificated flight instructor and the pilot receiving instruction.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA539
- Event ID
- 20090929X84758
- Case number
- ERA09CA539
- 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: 9588dfdb61c25b5062a74ca9277f7563ca137ed99f58462a83966c873911d2b2; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:21:47.211Z.