CEN17LA082 · Cessna 172M M
Cessna 172M M · Accident: runway excursion during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA082
- 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 M
- 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
- N80374
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Runway excursion
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was landing to the south after his personal flight. He stated that, during the landing, the airplane's ground speed "picked up," and he thought he had a tailwind. The airport owner thought the airplane was traveling at a high speed on approach. The pilot stated that he chose to land, and, as the airplane touched down, it "skipped" off the runway. The airplane then crashed into a wooded area off the departure end of the runway, which resulted in substantial damage to the wings, engine, and fuselage. The pilot could not recall what happened between the time the airplane "skipped" off the runway and when emergency personnel arrived. The engine throttle and fuel/air mixture controls were found in the full forward position, and the carburetor heat knob was found in the ON position. The flaps were retracted. The airplane appeared to be partially configured for a go-around; however, the pilot should have aborted the landing when he realized the airplane was traveling too fast.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to abort the landing when he recognized the airplane was traveling too fast, which resulted in impact with trees off the end of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA082
- Event ID
- 20170124X60408
- Case number
- CEN17LA082
- 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, coordinates. 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: 3e24e9fb082ce03f10bcae44d88ca13da18bbe215502289860750cc428c29761; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:58:07.367Z.