GAA16CA416 · Cessna 172 S
M.I. Air Cessna 172 S · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Chino Airport (CNO) to Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport (TRM)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA416
- 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 172 S
- 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
- N5203H
- Operator
- M.I. Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chino Airport (CNO), Chino, CATo Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport (TRM), Palm Springs, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2007)
- 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 · aborted after 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 on ground
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The solo student pilot reported that during the landing roll, the airplane drifted to the right of the runway centerline and he applied left rudder to correct. He further reported that he decided to abort the landing and applied full power. Subsequently, the airplane veered to the left, departed the runway, and nosed over in rough terrain. The student pilot reported that the airplane remained at "full power" through the nose over.
The vertical stabilizer and both wings sustained substantial damage.
The student pilot did not report any mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The Federal Aviation Administration Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge in part states: "To the pilot, "torque" (the left turning tendency of the airplane) is made up of four elements that cause or produce a twisting or rotating motion around at least one of the airplane's three axes. These four elements are:
1. Torque reaction from engine and propeller 2. Corkscrewing effect of the slipstream 3. Gyroscopic action of the propeller 4. Asymmetric loading of the propeller (P-factor)" It is likely that the student pilot did not counteract the left turning tendencies with sufficient right rudder after power was added to abort the landing.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain directional control during an aborted landing, which resulted in a runway excursion and a nose over in rough terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA416
- Event ID
- 20160804X62813
- Case number
- GAA16CA416
- 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: 2ee392b75c83a39d9010ea50e71be1d62b68c42b6df21d9f6285c005f682c4c2; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:47:01.588Z.