WPR17LA169 · Cessna 172A UNDESIGNAT
Cessna 172A UNDESIGNAT · Accident: landing area overshoot
From Enumclaw Airport (WA77) to Enumclaw Airport (WA77)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17LA169
- 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 172A UNDESIGNAT
- 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
- N7243T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Enumclaw Airport (WA77), Enumclaw, WATo Enumclaw Airport (WA77), Enumclaw, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1959)
- 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 · flare/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
- Landing area overshoot
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot and a noncurrent private pilot were conducting a local, personal flight. The student reported that he did not remember the flight or any details surrounding the accident other than that the private pilot was operating the airplane at the time of the accident. The private pilot did not provide an account of the accident.
A witness reported seeing the airplane making touch-and-go landings and noted that, during the last landing, the airplane landed near the departure end of the runway, attempted to stop, but the left main tire skidded, and with about 40 yards remaining, power was added for a takeoff attempt. The airplane then travelled off the runway end onto grass, impacted the top of the airport's barbed wire perimeter fence, and came to rest nose down.
The fence's top rail and about 260 ft of wire were found separated from the fence, a large part of the wire was twined around the airplane, and the top rail was found on the path between the runway and the wreckage, indicating that the airplane became airborne after the pilot added power.
Examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal evidence of any preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Given the evidence, it is likely that the pilot did not establish a proper approach for landing, which resulted in the airplane landing long, and that his subsequent delayed decision to go around with insufficient runway remaining led to the airplane impacting an airport perimeter fence.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper approach for landing, which resulted in the airplane landing long, and his delayed decision to go around with insufficient runway remaining, which resulted in collision with an airport perimeter fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17LA169
- Event ID
- 20170728X04935
- Case number
- WPR17LA169
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-07-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d7cd747d44f3eac425c65aac04937fc2d02dd1d3471bfff9a8f74b4e836cac22; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:37:16.254Z.