ERA14CA124 · Cessna 172S
King Aviation Mansfield Cessna 172S · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Mansfield Municipal Airport (1B9) to Mansfield Municipal Airport (1B9)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14CA124
- 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
- N2143X
- Operator
- King Aviation Mansfield
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mansfield Municipal Airport (1B9), Mansfield, MATo Mansfield Municipal Airport (1B9), Mansfield, MA
- Aircraft age
- About 11 years (built 2003)
- 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
- 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
- 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
According to the student pilot, during the solo flight while on final approach, he thought the airplane was on glidepath, but realized after the accident that the airplane was "low." Subsequently, the right main landing gear struck a snowbank at the end of the runway, which resulted in the right main landing gear being bent aft. The student pilot proceeded to land the airplane; however, upon landing it veered off the right side of the runway into another snowbank. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the firewall. The student pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain an adequate approach glide path, which resulted in a collision with a snow bank.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14CA124
- Event ID
- 20140219X32433
- Case number
- ERA14CA124
- 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: d5502efff978abbdf75e0e2c5674c0d2ec01b46d94a0e29a543b3ab31457beb7; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:19:48.391Z.