CEN21LA127 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to Middleton Municipal Morey Field (C29)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA127
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 172N
- 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
- N3477E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Middleton Municipal Morey Field (C29), Middleton, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1978)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the takeoff roll, the airplane encountered compacted snow on the runway surface, and the airplane slid to the left. The pilot, a solo student, reduced the engine throttle and applied right rudder; however, the airplane continued to the left. The left main landing gear hit a snowbank on the side of the runway, the airplane spun, and the right wing hit the snowbank. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing. A Notice to Airman for the airport reported the field conditions as 100% compacted snow with the conditions not monitored. The pilot stated that there were no mechanical anomalies with the airplane that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s loss of directional control during takeoff, which resulted in the collision with a snowbank. Contributing to the accident was the compacted snow conditions on the runway surface.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA127
- Event ID
- 20210215102632
- Case number
- CEN21LA127
- 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, cause areas. 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: 552673c48b4cc32fa650d962bebb6689ee6191e3624f7f6eec1fef4b4ba5d5d2; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:38:32.521Z.