ERA17LA252 · Cessna R172 K
Cessna R172 K · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Biddeford Municipal Airport (B19) to Brandy Pond Seaplane Base (5ME)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA252
- 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 R172 K
- 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
- N736NK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Biddeford Municipal Airport (B19), Biddeford, METo Brandy Pond Seaplane Base (5ME), Naples, ME
- Aircraft age
- About 40 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
- Landing
- 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 in flight
- 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 personal, cross-country flight and was attempting to land on a choppy lake with heavy boat traffic. A witness stated that the airplane looked high and fast during its descent before touching down, and a review of a video of the accident sequence revealed rapid, abrupt rolling of the wings just before water contact. At touchdown, the airplane bounced and then rotated back and forth about the roll axis, alternately contacting the water with the left and right pontoons. The roll oscillations increased in magnitude until the right pontoon and right wingtip dragged the water, which brought the airplane to an abrupt stop with the right wingtip submerged. The right wing and horizontal stabilizer sustained substantial damage.
Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of any preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airplane control during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA252
- Event ID
- 20170720X05549
- Case number
- ERA17LA252
- 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: d6afa7288d6c2a9ff27ae0c0769a5cb9a5b109692bf3f0440797bd3957850f3d; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:34:00.661Z.