GAA20CA023 · Cessna 172 S
Cardinal Wings Aviation Cessna 172 S · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Georgetown-Scott County Regional Airport (27K) to Bowman Field (LOU)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA20CA023
- 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 S
- 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
- N6097G
- Operator
- Cardinal Wings Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Georgetown-Scott County Regional Airport (27K), Georgetown, KYTo Bowman Field (LOU), Louisville, KY
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 2004)
- 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 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The solo student pilot reported that, while in the traffic pattern to land, the flaps would not lower, and he had to move the flap lever up and down several times to troubleshoot. Once on the base leg, he realized that the airplane was faster than normal. On final, he extended the flaps to 30° but felt the airplane was too high and fast. He reduced power to correct, and over the threshold, the airplane encountered a crosswind which pushed the airplane to the left of the runway centerline. He reduced power to idle and pushed the nose down "too quickly." The nose landing gear hit the runway first, the airplane porpoised, and he attempted to pitch the nose up to decrease airspeed. He was then worried that the airplane would aerodynamically stall "too high in the air," so he pitched the nose down. The airplane landed hard in the grass left of the runway, the nose dug into the ground, and the airplane came to rest inverted. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing. The student reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation and that he should have added full power and performed a go-around. He added that he felt pressured to land the airplane to "get out of everyone's way."
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper landing flare, which resulted in a porpoised landing, a subsequent hard landing on grass left of the runway, and a nose-over. Contributing to the accident was the student’s self-imposed pressure to land the airplane
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA20CA023
- Event ID
- 20191015X55607
- Case number
- GAA20CA023
- 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: 6efd41d63b380a165cda4616cb4ebefd593d0051201990126f53f85eb56d127e; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:23:25.787Z.