CEN15LA111 · Cessna 172F
Majestic Air Cessna 172F · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Lowell City Airport (24C) to Lowell City Airport (24C)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA111
- 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 172F
- 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
- N7854U
- Operator
- Majestic Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lowell City Airport (24C), Lowell, MITo Lowell City Airport (24C), Lowell, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1964)
- 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 go-around
- 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
The solo student pilot was attempting a full-stop landing. The student reported that, when he recognized that the touchdown point was too far down the runway, he initiated a go-around. He added that, during the go-around, he did not apply full power. Due to the low engine power setting, the airplane climbed very slowly. Concerned about trees off the end of the runway, the student initiated a crosswind turn at low altitude and subsequently lost control of the airplane, which then rapidly descended and impacted terrain. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s loss of airplane control during a go-around after not applying sufficient engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA111
- Event ID
- 20150120X70649
- Case number
- CEN15LA111
- 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: add2107309650d3d9e3bc5da7111ff354177521adaaaa09730f2018c3eabbafb; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:02:13.767Z.