WPR11CA413 · Cessna 172F
Cessna 172F · Accident on approach
From Emmett Municipal Airport (S78) to Atlanta Airport (55H)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11CA413
- 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 172F
- 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
- N8698U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Emmett Municipal Airport (S78), Emmett, IDTo Atlanta Airport (55H), Atlanta, ID
- 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 pattern final
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, on short final approach in his low performance airplane, he realized that his approach path was too high, so he attempted to go around. After full engine power was applied, he recognized that he had insufficient distance from the approaching trees and terrain to perform a go-around. Therefore, he aborted the maneuver and forced the airplane onto the ground in a clearing beyond the departure end of the runway. The airplane impacted the ground hard, breaking the wing and fuselage structure. The pilot reported that he was unfamiliar with the airport, and he had not read the Federal Aviation Administration’s published remarks for the airport in its Airport Facility Directory. The remarks state, in part, that the airport is recommended for use by “mountain proficient pilots using high performance aircraft.” It also states “no go-around due to rising terrain and trees.” Nine-thousand foot mountains are located within 5 miles from northwest through southeast of the 5,500-foot mean sea level airport.
Probable cause
The pilot’s misjudgment of his final approach path. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s inadequate preflight planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11CA413
- Event ID
- 20110830X40209
- Case number
- WPR11CA413
- 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: 75b4b13636e2aa445db9e1e12a2b37c749e27c90ce9c196978e33cd95ee257c7; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:40:35.504Z.