GAA16CA419 · Cessna 172 N
Wheels Down Cessna 172 N · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Flying Dog Airpark (MT56) to BZM · Bozeman, MT
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA419
- 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 N
- 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
- N734GM
- Operator
- Wheels Down
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flying Dog Airpark (MT56), Lewistown, MTTo BZM · Bozeman, MT
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1977)
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, during the takeoff roll about 30 knots indicated airspeed, his seat slid back a few inches. He reported that, "The slight movement of the pilot seat aft during takeoff roll was inconvenient. Had I done nothing at this point, it most likely would have been a manageable situation." However, the pilot reported that, "My reaction to move the seat forward using the adjustment bar during takeoff roll acceleration is what caused the pilot seat to move to the full aft position." He reported that the full aft seat movement caused him to pull back on the yoke, the nose landing gear came off the ground, and the airplane veered left and exited the runway to the left, and struck a fence before coming to a halt. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings, horizontal stabilizer, and elevator.
The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with the airplane during the takeoff roll that would have prevented normal flight operations.
Federal Aviation Administration Aviation Safety Inspector's examined the pilot's seat, track and adjustment assembly and found that there were no failures or anomalies.
According to the manufacturer's Pilot Operating Handbook, item number three of the Before Start Checklist states: Seats/Belts –Adjusted and locked
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to ensure that his seat was adjusted and locked, which resulted in his seat sliding aft during the takeoff roll, and the subsequent loss of directional control and runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA419
- Event ID
- 20160806X22308
- Case number
- GAA16CA419
- 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: 2d59e083f8a82c5b457bda4cc6f4137d80b0f5c32486829cfbcf356ca5a77c62; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:48:26.404Z.