CEN13LA041 · Cessna 172S
Marcair Cessna 172S · Accident on approach
From Possum Kingdom Airport (F35) to Aero Valley Airport (52F)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA041
- 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
- N985GE
- Operator
- Marcair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Possum Kingdom Airport (F35), Graford, TXTo Aero Valley Airport (52F), Roanoke, TX
- 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
- 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 student pilot was returning from a solo cross-country flight at the time of the accident. He stated that the approach for landing was normal until he was on short final approach, when the airplane's landing gear struck an automobile that was being driven on a road that crossed near the approach end of the runway. The airplane subsequently landed hard and the nose and left main landing gear collapsed. The airplane veered off the right side of the runway before coming to rest in the grass. The student pilot stated that there were no malfunctions or failures with the airplane before it impacted the vehicle. The automobile driver reported that he had been to the airport before and was aware of the proximity of the road to the runway, describing the layout as "precarious." He noted that he did not see or hear the approaching airplane traffic before the accident. He said he was about halfway across the road, immediately north of the runway, when he first heard the airplane engine; the airplane impacted his car immediately afterward.
The displaced threshold for the landing runway was located about 140 feet from the approach end of the runway. The roadway that crossed the extended runway centerline was located about 25 feet from the approach end of the runway pavement, about 165 feet from the displaced threshold. Data indicated that the runway threshold was previously displaced 400 feet. Although the privately-owned airport was not required to maintain airport design standards established by the Federal Aviation Administration, the proximity of the roadway and the reduced runway threshold displacement did not provide any safety margin for approaching aircraft.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain clearance from obstacles on the runway approach path. Contributing to the accident was the airport management's decision to relocate the runway displaced threshold, which did not provide an adequate safety margin for approaching aircraft, and the automobile driver's inadequate lookout for approaching aircraft before crossing the runway's approach path.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA041
- Event ID
- 20121103X14112
- Case number
- CEN13LA041
- 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: 1aed0354246d1e5d810db08592ce6a2eee02e32cee89ea56f825b2064ba82134; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:19:48.572Z.