CEN18LA171 · Cessna 172N N
Cessna 172N N · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Markley Farm Airport (OH24) to Greenbrier Valley Airport (LWB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA171
- 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 172N N
- 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
- N738XT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Markley Farm Airport (OH24), Orrville, OHTo Greenbrier Valley Airport (LWB), Lewisburg, WV
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1978)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
During initial climb after a soft field takeoff, the private pilot noted that the airspeed was low, which he thought was due to a pitot system error. He pulled back on the yoke and the airplane's stall warning horn immediately sounded. The airplane was descending, and the pilot maneuvered to avoid obstructions. He pulled the yoke all the way back to fully stall the airplane before the airplane impacted the ground and nosed over. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. Based on the available information, it is likely that the pilot failed to attain adequate airspeed control during the takeoff and initial climb, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and a subsequent aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to attain adequate airspeed during the soft field takeoff, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA171
- Event ID
- 20180511X23112
- Case number
- CEN18LA171
- 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: 58bb748ece03a7c513237ea4d1e884fea6e86f3a42763a4a978bffa0381f34bf; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:09:13.138Z.