ERA18LA233 · Cessna 172 M
Epix Aviation Cessna 172 M · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK) to New Kent County Airport (W96)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA233
- 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
- 0
- 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 M
- 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
- N1537U
- Operator
- Epix Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK), Norfolk, VATo New Kent County Airport (W96), New Kent, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1976)
- 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 student pilot was on the first leg of a solo cross-country flight. A witness at the destination airport reported that he heard loud “engine noise,” looked up, and then saw the airplane about midfield in a steep, left descending turn with the “nose about 40° down.” The airplane then descended out of his view behind a hangar, and shortly thereafter, he heard the sound of impact. Examination of the accident site revealed that the airplane had struck a power line about 700 ft left of the runway centerline at midfield, impacted terrain and three different sections of fencing, and then came to rest nose down. During postaccident examination of the airplane, the throttle control was found in the full-forward position, and the pitch trim was found in a slightly nose-down position. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of any preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. According to the flight school owner, a flight school policy prohibited students from conducting touch-and-go landings on solo cross-country flights. Given this policy and the postaccident throttle position, it is likely that the student was conducting a go-around and that he lost airplane control during the initial climb.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s loss of airplane control during a go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA233
- Event ID
- 20180826X90942
- Case number
- ERA18LA233
- 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, cause areas. 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: 9b1f1a6f479ea24058df6e2521f5ea97afc39e5c1012b3fdf3e73050f7eb59fb; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:09:39.936Z.