CEN17LA257 · Cessna 182T
Brampton Flight Centre Cessna 182T · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From St Clair County International Airport (PHN) to Jackson County Airport/Reynolds Field (JXN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA257
- 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 182T
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- CGBFY
- Operator
- Brampton Flight Centre
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Clair County International Airport (PHN), Port Huron, MITo Jackson County Airport/Reynolds Field (JXN), Jackson, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2004)
- 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
- 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 private pilot was conducting a cross-country flight and was performing a stop-and-go landing at an interim airport. After landing, he fully retracted the flaps. During the subsequent takeoff roll, the pilot had the pilot-rated passenger extend the flaps to 10°, and the airplane began to porpoise and then impacted terrain.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. During the examination, the nose pitch trim was found in the full nose-down position. Full nose-down pitch trim would have increased the pitch control forces needed to counteract the nose-down pitching tendencies of the airplane when the flaps were initially extended. (Initial flap deflections of up to 15° while moving can cause the airplane to balloon and create nose-down pitching tendencies.) Thus, the combination of the full nose-down pitch trim and the extension of the flaps during the takeoff roll would have required increased pitch control inputs to maintain airplane control. It is likely the pilot did not make such inputs and that this resulted in his loss of pitch control during the attempted takeoff.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain pitch control during the takeoff roll during an attempted takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's selection of takeoff flaps after he began the takeoff roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA257
- Event ID
- 20170707X35638
- Case number
- CEN17LA257
- 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: 48b0b53b5defc0e5e05a6e7f9be030c5a835fbb54abcc2619512a36d07232c04; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:30:48.969Z.