CEN13LA581 · Cessna 172 UNDESIGNAT
Cessna 172 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Lowell Smith Jr Airport (3TX6) to Lowell Smith Jr Airport (3TX6)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA581
- 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 172 UNDESIGNAT
- 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
- N8878B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lowell Smith Jr Airport (3TX6), Rio Vista, TXTo Lowell Smith Jr Airport (3TX6), Rio Vista, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1958)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 and flight instructor were conducting the flight. The student reported that he and the flight instructor had landed at the airstrip to pick up a passenger. They then took off from the grass airstrip with the student flying the airplane. The airplane was about half to three-quarters of the way down the runway when it lifted off. The student pointed the airplane's nose forward to increase the airspeed, but the airplane was nearing the end of the runway. He raised the nose to climb higher, but the airplane would not climb. About 70 ft above ground level, the airplane stalled. The flight instructor then took the controls, but the airplane was not accelerating. The airplane struck a tree at the end of the airstrip and then impacted the ground.
The pilot stated that he did not think the engine was producing sufficient power; however, no anomalies were found with the airplane during a postaccident examination. The runway was 2,600 ft long, and, based on the weather conditions at the time of the accident, the airplane's takeoff ground run distance to clear a 50-ft obstacle was 1,287 ft. Given that the airplane did not lift off until about half to three-quarters of the way down the runway, it is likely that there was insufficient runway distance remaining for the airplane to safely clear the trees at the end of the airstrip. The student raised the airplane's nose to gain altitude, which resulted in his failure to maintain adequate airspeed and led to the exceedance of the airplane's critical angle-of-attack and a subsequent aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed during the initial climb after an excessive takeoff run from a grass airstrip, which resulted in the exceedance of the airplane's critical angle-of-attack and a subsequent aerodynamic stall and loss of control. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor's inadequate supervision and delayed remediation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA581
- Event ID
- 20131113X40955
- Case number
- CEN13LA581
- 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: 57599a2361282009fd8664cc0bd70397127778865bbbf774a404e630d4f81115; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:06:10.439Z.