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ERA14CA151 · Cessna 172M

7 Mar 2014 · Pittstown, NJ, United States

Morris Aero Club Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing

From Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU) to Sky Manor Airport (N40)

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Event

NTSB case
ERA14CA151
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 172M

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
N1319U
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU), Morristown, NJTo Sky Manor Airport (N40), Pittstown, NJ
Aircraft age
About 38 years (built 1976)
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
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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot reported that during the landing flare, about 1 to 2 feet above the ground, the airplane drifted right. The right main landing gear then contacted a snowbank along the right side of the runway, which caused the airplane to nose over. The airplane subsequently came to rest inverted adjacent to the runway. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. The inspector did not observe any preimpact mechanical malfunctions with the airplane, nor did the pilot report any. The recorded wind at a nearby airport, about the time of the accident, was variable at 6 knots.

Probable cause

The pilot's failure to maintain directional control while landing.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ERA14CA151
Event ID
20140311X54001
Case number
ERA14CA151
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: 6f575ba9fcaf278f4cfd65d016857eb3b7406e85ae4264f1cbbffdb30899a666; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:23:20.263Z.