CEN12LA059 · Cessna 172M
Bear Butte Flying Club Cessna 172M · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during takeoff
From Sturgis Municipal Airport (49B) to Sturgis Municipal Airport (49B)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA059
- 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
- 1 · 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 172M
- 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
- N13584
- Operator
- Bear Butte Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sturgis Municipal Airport (49B), Sturgis, SDTo Sturgis Municipal Airport (49B), Sturgis, SD
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that during the student pilot’s second solo landing, the airplane’s flaps were not retracted before the next takeoff. After takeoff, the airplane pitched up to a 60-degree nose-up attitude. According to the flight instructor, the airplane’s engine sounded like it was developing full power. The airplane entered a half-turn spin and impacted the terrain vertically. Postaccident examination showed that the flaps were extended and revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunction or anomaly that would have precluded normal operation. Toxicology tests detected acetaminophen and diphenhydramine in the pilot's urine. Although diphenhydramine can cause drowsiness, the investigation could not determine whether it contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane during takeoff with extended flaps.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA059
- Event ID
- 20111111X31005
- Case number
- CEN12LA059
- 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: 961ccc5392b93186ae3ec30ac2466e0bb477eababd14a38a5713d1914fe95079; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:58:22.454Z.