CEN14LA320 · Cessna 172XP
Cessna 172XP · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From St. Cloud, MN to St. Cloud, MN
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA320
- 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 172XP
- 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
- N758HP
- Operator
- Eich Todd A
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Cloud, MNTo St. Cloud, MN
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that everything was normal when he conducted a preflight inspection and engine run-up of the single-engine, float-equipped airplane before takeoff from a lake. The airplane departed, and, as it began to climb, the engine started to lose power. The airplane then stalled, the left wing dropped and struck the water, and the airplane flipped inverted and eventually sank.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that, when the propeller was rotated manually, all of the engine cylinders, except for the No. 3 cylinder, produced compression. The intake valve, exhaust valve, and rocker arm moved when the propeller was rotated. No further examination of the engine was conducted, and the reason for the No. 3 cylinder's failure to produce compression could not be determined. It is likely that, as the engine began to lose power, the pilot did not maintain the proper airspeed or angle-of-attack, which led to a stall and the subsequent impact with water.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain the proper airspeed and angle-of-attack after a partial loss of engine power on takeoff, which resulted in a stall and the subsequent impact with water. Contributing to the accident was the partial loss of engine power due to the No. 3 cylinder not producing compression for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA320
- Event ID
- 20140626X94307
- Case number
- CEN14LA320
- 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: 4bff83e9104863987e7604f82ff78551e340bd4364c374483790b5abf2087635; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:29:40.115Z.