CEN12CA200 · Cessna 172P
United States Air Force Aero Club Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From USAF Academy Airfield (AFF) to USAF Academy Airfield (AFF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12CA200
- 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
- N97LP
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From USAF Academy Airfield (AFF), Colorado Springs, COTo USAF Academy Airfield (AFF), Colorado Springs, CO
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he rotated the airplane at 55 knots and that it immediately started to drift. He heard the stall warning horn so he lowered the nose. The airplane subsequently impacted the ground, and the pilot pulled the throttle to idle. The airplane was approaching the crossing runway, and there was a hump or ditch near the runway edge. The pilot pulled back on the controls to avoid the obstacle, and the airplane became airborne and climbed to about 10 to 15 feet above the ground. The airplane then landed hard and bounced. The nose landing gear impacted the dirt and the airplane nosed over, which resulted in substantial damage to the airframe. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot reported that the wind during takeoff was “slightly from the right” at 9 knots gusting to 13 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot did not maintain control of the airplane during takeoff, which resulted in a hard landing and subsequent nose over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12CA200
- Event ID
- 20120326X00523
- Case number
- CEN12CA200
- 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: e0d9d154e96caeecab599e465bd29820591ad11e60e4e5d2219edeac90759d67; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:34:09.493Z.