ERA15CA042 · Cessna 172M
Pilot Training Center Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Miami Executive Airport (TMB) to Everglades Airpark (X01)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15CA042
- 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
- N696PT
- Operator
- Pilot Training Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami Executive Airport (TMB), Miami, FLTo Everglades Airpark (X01), Everglades City, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1975)
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the student pilot, he was performing a full stop landing from the left seat with his instructor in the right seat. During the flare, a sudden gust of wind "pushed the airplane to the left" and the instructor took the controls. The instructor pilot also reported that a sudden, heavy gust of wind was encountered, and the airplane "started ballooning up" and turned "drastically" to the left. The instructor attempted a go-around; however, the airplane was already at low altitude and it collided with the ground. The airplane impacted hard on the grassy area adjacent to the runway, breaking off the nose gear. Federal Aviation Administration inspectors reported that substantial damage resulted to the airframe's left and right wings. The instructor pilot reported that there were no mechanical problems with the airplane at the time of the accident. Although there was no weather reporting capability at the landing airport, gusting wind conditions were reported about 18 miles to the northwest.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to compensate for gusting wind conditions during the flare, and the flight instructor's failure to intervene in a timely manner, resulting in a loss of airplane control and hard landing off of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15CA042
- Event ID
- 20141104X04728
- Case number
- ERA15CA042
- 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: 5c9e100f44e1cbecda0c620849992d8f6569e408815baae4191def7ae4dff62a; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:54:37.009Z.