CEN18CA323 · Cessna 172 R
Cessna 172 R · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Fort Morgan Municipal Airport (FMM) to Greeley–Weld County Airport (GXY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18CA323
- 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 R
- 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
- N20JA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Morgan Municipal Airport (FMM), Fort Morgan, COTo Greeley–Weld County Airport (GXY), Greeley, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 21 years (built 1997)
- 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
- 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
The pilot and a safety pilot were practicing instrument maneuvers, approaches, and landings at different airports during the flight. The airplane entered the traffic pattern for a practice landing at an airport. According to the safety pilot, the airplane was high and slow during the final approach. About 10 ft above ground level, the airplane "floated a little longer," and the pilot initiated a go-around by applying full throttle. During the attempted go-around, both occupants applied conflicting "correction" inputs to the control yokes; the pilot applied back pressure, and the safety pilot applied forward pressure. The airplane stalled, the left wing impacted terrain, and the airplane came to rest upright adjacent to the runway.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the forward fuselage and both wings.
Both pilots reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot statements were conflicting regarding the accident details and sequence of events. Based on the statements and airplane damage, it is likely that the conflicting control inputs resulted in the pilots' failure to maintain a proper airspeed and that the airplane entered an aerodynamic stall during the attempted go-around. Neither pilot reported that verbal communication was established during the landing sequence.
Probable cause
The pilot’s and safety pilot's conflicting control inputs during landing, which resulted in their failure to maintain a proper airspeed and resulted in an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the lack of communication between the pilot and safety pilot during the landing and go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18CA323
- Event ID
- 20180809X01035
- Case number
- CEN18CA323
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-08-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9515a5b4fb25279f43b0e6552e84c68ca6afb599cde5cb0700f76393566c84ac; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:04:02.424Z.