ERA17LA324 · Cessna 195 UNDESIGNAT
Cessna 195 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Newnan Coweta County Airport (CCO) to Newnan Coweta County Airport (CCO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA324
- 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 195 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 195
- 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
- N2100C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Newnan Coweta County Airport (CCO), Newman, GATo Newnan Coweta County Airport (CCO), Newman, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 64 years (built 1953)
- 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to airline transport pilot, during the takeoff roll, the airplane veered left. The pilot tried to correct the turn without success, and the airplane subsequently departed the left side of the runway, struck a taxiway light, and then came to rest in grass adjacent to the runway. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and right wing. The pilot reported that he had owned the airplane for about 1 month, during which time he observed that he had to continuously apply right rudder for the airplane to taxi straight ahead, which he thought was normal for that airplane.
Examination of the tailwheel assembly revealed that, when the rudder pedals were centered, the rudder was also centered. However, the tailwheel remained in a left-turn position and required about 75% right rudder input to center the tailwheel, and with full-right rudder deflection, the tailwheel turned very little to the right. A review of the maintenance records revealed that maintenance, including the installation of a new upper mount assembly and a new tailwheel strut, was performed on the tailwheel assembly about 3 years before the accident. Given the pilot's report that he had always needed to apply right rudder for the airplane to taxi straight ahead, it is likely that the tailwheel assembly was improperly rigged following the previous maintenance.
Probable cause
The improper rigging of the tailwheel assembly, which resulted in a loss of directional control during takeoff. Contributing to accident was the pilot’s decision to operate the airplane despite knowing it required excessive right rudder inputs for it to move straight ahead.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA324
- Event ID
- 20170815X32207
- Case number
- ERA17LA324
- 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: 1cb7f62bddb701d0b2c156433310bad30d529e4cf09608e98f526b9293de7594; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:42:27.956Z.