ERA12CA419 · Cessna 172S
Palm Beach Flight Training Cessna 172S · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Palm Beach County Park Airport (KLNA) to Palm Beach County Park Airport (KLNA)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA419
- 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
- N961MC
- Operator
- Palm Beach Flight Training
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palm Beach County Park Airport (KLNA), Lantana, FLTo Palm Beach County Park Airport (KLNA), Lantana, FL
- 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 flight instructor stated that he and the student pilot were practicing touch-and-go landings in crosswind conditions. The student pilot landed uneventfully on runway 31; however, during the takeoff roll, the airplane encountered a gust of wind and began to veer to the right. The flight instructor took control of the airplane; however, as it subsequently climbed to an altitude of about 10 feet above the ground, another wind gust caused the airplane to roll over. The airplane came to rest inverted on the adjacent taxiway resulting in substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. The flight instructor reported that were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane. The reported wind at the airport about the time of the accident was from 220 degrees at 19 knots with 29-knot gusts. The pilot operating handbook for this airplane indicates that operation in a direct crosswind of up to 15 knots has been demonstrated.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s failure to maintain airplane control during the takeoff in gusting crosswind conditions. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor’s decision to conduct takeoffs and landings in conditions exceeding the airplane’s maximum demonstrated crosswind capability.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA419
- Event ID
- 20120628X74946
- Case number
- ERA12CA419
- 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: dea7dcd4657457c609e8eb8d819b5c10b7242088ca5adcd307983b62ec24bf3c; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:39:53.435Z.