GAA17CA530 · Cessna 172 P
Interstate Aviation Cessna 172 P · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport (BAF) to Robertson Field (4B8)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA530
- 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 172 P
- 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
- N54463
- Operator
- Interstate Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport (BAF), WESTFIELD/SPRINGFIELD, MATo Robertson Field (4B8), Plainville, CT
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1981)
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during touchdown, the airplane bounced, and he chose to go around. He applied full power, set the carburetor heat to cold, and began incrementally retracting the flaps. The airplane drifted left of the runway centerline toward a parking lot but was not gaining sufficient altitude. The pilot started looking for a spot to execute a forced landing when the airplane impacted a tree.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed substantial damage to both wings and the fuselage.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to properly execute the go-around, which resulted in the airplane failing to maintain a climb, which resulted in collision with a tree.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA530
- Event ID
- 20170911X24151
- Case number
- GAA17CA530
- 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, coordinates. 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: d2a2c76b89b01dcea940eaaaf448b0028eaa00fcb61d5f820743f2b886831369; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:49:25.924Z.