CEN15LA343 · Cessna 172G
Cessna 172G · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Grass Airstrip, NE to Hartington Municipal Airport / Bud Becker Field (0B4)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA343
- 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 172G
- 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
- N5800R
- Operator
- Ronald Feimer
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grass Airstrip, NETo Hartington Municipal Airport / Bud Becker Field (0B4), Hartington, NE
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1966)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that he departed from a private grass airstrip with the airplane's flaps set to 30 degrees. He then climbed the airplane to about 20 ft above ground level (agl) and continued to the southwest. About 50 ft agl, as the pilot reached over to raise the flaps 10 degrees, the engine lost partial power. The yoke abruptly came back toward him, the airplane's nose pitched up, and the stall warning horn sounded. He pushed the yoke forward as hard as he could with both hands and trimmed the nosewheel down, but the trimwheel was hard to turn, almost requiring two hands to move it. He reached over to the flap handle and "bumped" it to 10 degrees. The airplane then aerodynamically stalled, and it impacted the ground in a steep nose-down attitude.
Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The damage to the propeller indicated that the engine was developing power at the time of ground impact. The airplane owner's manual stated that "Flap settings of 30- to 40-degrees are not recommended at any time for take-off." Although the pilot reported a partial loss of engine power, it is likely that flying the airplane out of ground effect with the flap setting of 30 degrees significantly increased the induced drag, which created the effect of not having sufficient engine power to overcome the drag and prevent an aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to use an excessive, unapproved flap setting for takeoff, which significantly increased the induced drag and resulted in an aerodynamic stall when the airplane flew out of ground effect.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA343
- Event ID
- 20150810X22742
- Case number
- CEN15LA343
- 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: a8f20ae03cda0cc408ba80de2c268ba6f3d3fe5630d9c0f9dca7ba4757aa99e0; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:38:32.750Z.