WPR18LA262 · Cessna 172 N
Cessna 172 N · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From St Johns Industrial Air Park (SJN) to Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA262
- 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 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
- N734FT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Johns Industrial Air Park (SJN), St. Johns, AZTo Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR), Goodyear, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1977)
- 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he initially attempted to take off, but the airplane was not accelerating fast enough and he aborted the takeoff. The pilot then decided to take off from a longer runway at the airport. When the airplane was about 100 ft above ground level, he observed that it was not continuing to climb. The pilot-rated passenger/owner stated that the stall warning horn sounded. The airplane began to lose altitude and subsequently collided with a stand of trees. The airplane came to rest inverted and sustained substantial damage to both wings, the forward fuselage, and the empennage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation and that the airplane's weight was about 50 lbs less than its maximum gross takeoff weight. The pilot-rated passenger reported that he thought that the high density altitude was the cause of the accident.
The calculated density altitude was about 8,600 ft at the time of the accident. According to the Federal Aviation Administration Koch Chart, given the surrounding temperature and field elevation, the airplane would have likely experienced a 68% decrease in the normal climb rate. Thus, it is likely that the airplane did not have sufficient airspeed to climb in those conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning before takeoff in the high density altitude conditions, which resulted in the airplane being unable to maintain sufficient airspeed to continue to climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA262
- Event ID
- 20180915X11112
- Case number
- WPR18LA262
- 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: ec3127962d1cdbe146cb5ee24894c37b62f970cd0cc861bb278e0b23be102286; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:14:54.844Z.