WPR14LA250 · Cessna 172RG
Cessna 172RG · Accident: runway excursion during takeoff
From Alturas Municipal Airport (AAT) to Alturas Municipal Airport (AAT)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA250
- 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 172RG
- 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
- N6091R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Alturas Municipal Airport (AAT), Alturas, CATo Alturas Municipal Airport (AAT), Alturas, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1979)
- 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 · rejected 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
- Runway excursion
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during the takeoff roll for the local flight, the airplane did not reach rotation speed but that it briefly became airborne and then immediately settled back onto the runway. She noted that the takeoff roll was longer than normal because, after settling, the airplane was beyond the runway's halfway point. The pilot decided to abort the takeoff when she realized that there was insufficient runway remaining. She then reduced engine power and applied the brakes, and the passenger also applied the brakes. The airplane was subsequently intentionally veered off the right side of the runway and it then collided with a ditch and fence and nosed over.
During the postaccident examination of the airplane, the wheels were hard to rotate by hand. The brake assemblies revealed thermal discoloration to the rotors and damaged pad material, which likely resulted from the excessive braking during the aborted takeoff. Further examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The airplane’s failure to attain rotation speed during the takeoff roll for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s delayed decision to abort the takeoff with insufficient runway remaining to stop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA250
- Event ID
- 20140619X24508
- Case number
- WPR14LA250
- 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: b53a4fed850467c838bc4a848ad4236e9551307feace8c1567bd0fdb0b381379; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:06:33.993Z.