ERA13CA266 · Cessna 172L
Cessna 172L · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Greenville Municipal Airport (3B1) to Millinocket Municipal Airport (MLT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13CA266
- 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 172L
- 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
- N9816G
- Operator
- Harry & Nancy Ricker
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greenville Municipal Airport (3B1), Greenville, METo Millinocket Municipal Airport (MLT), Millinocket, ME
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the student pilot, he was on a solo cross country flight. While arriving at the destination airport he decided the wind was favoring runway 29. He positioned the airplane for landing. While on final approach, he experienced a left crosswind for only a short period of time and continued with the approach. On landing, the pilot flared “normally”, but encountered a wind gust from the left just before the landing gear touched down. The airplane began to weathervane to the left and the pilot applied power along with full right rudder and right aileron to counteract the turn; however, the right main landing gear touched down and the airplane traveled to the right side of the runway. The pilot “released the throttle” and, with the left wing and left main landing gear in the air, the airplane continued to the left side of the runway and subsequently the right main landing gear collapsed. The airplane eventually came to rest on the runway. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the right wing and firewall. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that could have precluded normal operation. At the time of the accident, the wind was reported as variable at 4 knots.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to maintain directional control during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13CA266
- Event ID
- 20130604X13521
- Case number
- ERA13CA266
- 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: 2534492325fb451c8e5cc7e4407bd8ef4fa9e7467dc3fa34f7597d3e2a5d8853; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:46:10.835Z.