ERA13CA218 · Cessna 172P
Mclean Holding Group Cessna 172P · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) during initial climb
From Leesburg Executive Airport (JYO) to Windwood Fly-In Resort Airport (WV62)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13CA218
- 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
- N96178
- Operator
- Mclean Holding Group
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Leesburg Executive Airport (JYO), Leesburg, VATo Windwood Fly-In Resort Airport (WV62), Davis, WV
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At the end of a cross-country flight, the pilot entered the traffic pattern for the 3,000-foot-long by 40-foot-wide runway at the residential airpark. The pilot stated that because he was concerned about the houses located near the runway, he approached the runway higher and faster than he normally would. As a result, the airplane touched down near the runway mid-point. When he realized that insufficient distance remained to stop the airplane, the pilot aborted the landing. During the subsequent climb, the pilot heard the stall warning sound and decreased the pitch attitude to gain airspeed. About that time, the airplane struck trees beyond the departure end of the runway and impacted the ground in a nose-down attitude, which resulted in substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airframe or engine what would have precluded normal operation and that his decision to abort the landing was “about 5 seconds too late.”
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper glidepath as he approached the runway and his subsequent delayed decision to abort the landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13CA218
- Event ID
- 20130428X50819
- Case number
- ERA13CA218
- 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: 262d3a6830f044768f1d7c9317cdada42c8b47878d8dbdf1c230a5adcc5faa12; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:22:11.632Z.