WPR11LA284 · Cessna 172S
Cessna 172S · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Concord, CA to Palo Alto Airport (PAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA284
- 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 172S
- 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
- N222MF
- Operator
- Advanced Flyers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Concord, CATo Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, CA
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following an uneventful flight, the pilot entered the airport traffic pattern midfield for his intended runway. While turning from the base leg to the final leg of the pattern, he decided that the airplane was slightly low and advanced the throttle forward; the engine did not respond, and the airplane’s descent rate continued. The pilot then realized that the engine had lost power. He immediately began troubleshooting the loss of engine power and continued toward the runway. Attempts to start the engine were unsuccessful and, realizing that he would not be able to reach the runway, he initiated a forced landing to an open marsh area south of the airport. During the landing roll, the nosewheel dug into the ground and the airplane nosed over. During the postaccident engine examination the engine was run successfully and no mechanical anomalies or failures that would have precluded normal operation were noted; the smell of fuel was present at the accident site. The reason for the loss of engine power was not determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for undetermined reasons during the landing approach over unsuitable terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA284
- Event ID
- 20110624X33722
- Case number
- WPR11LA284
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2011-06-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fe112ffd79433fa4123f38ac72d5d72289a951ed971a98ca0dc601f5aef65730; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:20:41.612Z.