CEN19LA107 · Cessna R172E
Cessna R172E · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS) to Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA107
- 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 R172E
- 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
- N7879N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), Colorado Sprngs, COTo Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL), Loveland, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1967)
- 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 pattern base
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the pilot approached the airport, another pilot heard him on the radio and advised him of "significant down drafts" on the approach to runway 15. The pilot acknowledged the transmission and continued his approach. When he turned onto the base leg, he encountered the "severe down-draft/microburst" the other pilot had mentioned. He applied full power in an attempt to climb out, but the airplane continued to descend striking a power-line and tree, and subsequently impacted terrain.
A review of the weather showed that a complex wind pattern existed over the area during the period with a wind shift occurring immediately after the time of the accident. No support for convective microburst activity was noted over the area; however, a large area of light intensity precipitation with some potential for some outflow was noted, which could have been resulted in the different winds occurring over the accident site during the period. In addition, the High Resolution Rapid Refresh model sounding and satellite imagery and pilot reports noted support for mountain wave activity over the area, which supported downslope winds and downdraft activity in the area at the time of the accident. The National Weather Service had AIRMET advisories for turbulence and IFR and mountain obscuration conditions over the area, but no advisory for low-level wind shear.
It is likely the pilot encountered shifting winds due to weather system in the area. With his reduced engine power on the base leg of the traffic pattern, the pilot most likely got into a downdraft that produced a sink rate that he could not recover from.
Probable cause
An inflight loss of control on landing approach due to encountering a down-draft, and the pilot's failure to take timely action to abandon the approach and perform a go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA107
- Event ID
- 20190324X30039
- Case number
- CEN19LA107
- 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: d1a3ba2da5cdea7c1c7a119811cdefe3797028d1d69a3b4cc92c4eacf3e8fa29; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:41:02.413Z.