ERA18LA054 · Cessna 177 UNDESIGNAT
Cessna 177 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Ridgeland-Claude Dean Airport (3J1) to Statesboro Bulloch County Airport (TBR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA054
- 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 177 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N3179T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ridgeland-Claude Dean Airport (3J1), Ridgeland, SCTo Statesboro Bulloch County Airport (TBR), Statesboro, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 50 years (built 1967)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that the student pilot was performing a takeoff while the flight instructor gently held the control wheel with both hands. The student pilot had his left hand on the control wheel and his right hand on the throttle as the airplane accelerated down the runway. When the airspeed reached 65 knots, the student pilot initiated a climb, but the airplane began to pull to the left; this airplane has an inherent tendency to turn left during takeoff. The flight instructor tried to take control of the airplane, but the student pilot continued to hold the control wheel and throttle. The flight instructor had good aileron and elevator control as he tried to maneuver away from the approaching hangars and maintain airspeed; however, he could not recall if the rudder pedals moved when he pushed them. The airplane continued left, touched down momentarily, then bounced back in the air. The flight instructor realized the airplane was not going to clear the hangars, so he shut off the engine with the mixture control. The airplane struck a hangar with the left wing, pivoted, and struck another hangar with its right wing before coming to a stop; the airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings, the fuselage, and the empennage. The student pilot stated that he remembered adding full power to takeoff and then initiating a climb at 70 knots. He did not remember what happened after that except that they had “no rudder control” and could not maintain the runway centerline.
Postaccident examination of the airplane’s flight controls revealed continuity for each control, including the rudder, and no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions were identified that would have precluded normal operation. Because the flight instructor did not recall if the rudder pedals moved when he tried to press on them and the student pilot never let go of the throttle or control wheel, the student pilot likely had his feet on the rudder pedals, which impeded the instructor from taking full control of the airplane and resulted in the loss of control.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s improper control inputs, which resulted in a loss of control on takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor’s inadequate remedial action.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA054
- Event ID
- 20171219X74947
- Case number
- ERA18LA054
- 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: 8e03df13d5eee76164ad1ffb0bd28de12261d017d84839758c27b0a46337d017; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:11:57.015Z.