GAA19CA192 · Cessna 172 L
Rich Aviation Services Cessna 172 L · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Parker County Airport (WEA) to Parker County Airport (WEA)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA19CA192
- 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 L
- 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
- N902RA
- Operator
- Rich Aviation Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Parker County Airport (WEA), Weatherford, TXTo Parker County Airport (WEA), Weatherford, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1971)
- 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 · aborted after touchdown
- 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 on ground
- 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 solo student pilot reported that, during landing, the airplane was configured with flaps 30° and that the airspeed was 70 knots. When the airplane was over the runway, he reduced the throttle to idle and initiated the landing flare. The airplane descended rapidly, landed hard, and bounced. He aborted the landing, "but the wind caught me and the next thing I knew, I was facing the taxiway." The airplane exited the left side of the runway into grass and nosed over.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing lift strut.
The student reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The METAR at the airport reported that, at the time of the accident, the wind was from 050° at 12 knots, gusting to 20 knots. The pilot landed the airplane on runway 32.
According to the manufacturer's Pilot's Operating Handbook, the maximum demonstrated crosswind is 15 knots. The crosswind component for the accident flight was 16 knots.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing, and his subsequent failure to maintain directional control in gusting crosswind conditions that exceeded the airplane’s demonstrated crosswind for landing, which resulted in a runway excursion and nose-over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA19CA192
- Event ID
- 20190401X14946
- Case number
- GAA19CA192
- 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: 7a638be605e9b09c3f232c7894bbbb804914bee9c3fc1327ddf3b324807c6f18; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:42:29.222Z.