CEN17LA303 · Cessna A188B
Cessna A188B · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Marshall Memorial Municipal Airport (MHL) to Marshall Memorial Municipal Airport (MHL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA303
- 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 A188B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- N3047J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Marshall Memorial Municipal Airport (MHL), Marshall, MOTo Marshall Memorial Municipal Airport (MHL), Marshall, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1979)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 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
After takeoff for the agricultural application flight and when the commercial pilot reduced engine power to climb, the engine "surged." He increased the throttle, but the engine "surged" again. He subsequently applied full throttle, but he was unable to maintain a positive climb rate. The airplane gradually settled into a bean field off the end of the runway. The airplane impacted a fence before coming to rest in an adjacent field. The pilot stated that the airplane seemed to be "sagging" after takeoff but that the engine instrument indications appeared to be normal.
Postaccident engine examination did not reveal evidence of any preimpact anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The reason for the engine surging reported by the pilot could not be determined. According to the pilot, the airspeed indicator was inoperative at the time of the accident. It is likely that the pilot's inability to monitor the airspeed due to the lack of an operative airspeed indicator led to the pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed, his exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and the subsequent aerodynamic stall/mush and degraded climb performance.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to accurately monitor the airplane's airspeed after takeoff due to an inoperative airspeed indicator, which resulted in the pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed and his exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and the subsequent aerodynamic stall/mush and degraded climb performance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA303
- Event ID
- 20170806X13056
- Case number
- CEN17LA303
- 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: 8dc27d8405e33154012fe436cd8cd9b47c9285594f587d124404868e47f5b598; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:40:04.604Z.