GAA19CA123 · Cessna 172 C
Cessna 172 C · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Mc Pherson Airport (MPR) to Center Municipal Airport (F17)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA19CA123
- 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 C
- 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
- N8487X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mc Pherson Airport (MPR), Mc Pherson, KSTo Center Municipal Airport (F17), Center, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1962)
- 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
- Landing
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during the landing flare, a wind gust "lifted the wing up 90 degrees." She then leveled the wings and added full power. When the wings were leveled, the airplane was above a drainage ditch between the runway and parallel taxiway. She realized that the airplane would not gain enough airspeed to "make the [taxiway]," so she intentionally aerodynamically stalled the airplane to "prevent flipping" it. The airplane descended and impacted the drainage ditch.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right and left wings.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The airport's automated weather observation system reported that the wind was from 310° at 14 knots, gusting to 23 knots. A weather station located about 2 miles southwest of the airport reported that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 311° at 2.7 mph (about 2 knots), gusting to 12.1 mph (about 11 knots). The pilot was landing the airplane on runway 35.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack during landing in gusting crosswind conditions, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA19CA123
- Event ID
- 20181221X93113
- Case number
- GAA19CA123
- 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: bdb0b638b43916b486dd7463ba7e3afa78a1a3998c5dfbaf490a85796514f293; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:30:27.937Z.