ERA21LA215 · Cessna 172 S
Phoenix East Aviation Cessna 172 S · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA215
- 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
- 0
- 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
- N62568
- Operator
- Phoenix East Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2008)
- 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 · flare/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 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- 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 flight instructor and a private pilot receiving instruction stated completed commercial pilot training maneuvers uneventfully and were returning to the airport for a full stop landing. The flight instructor advised the student to fly a higher approach speed due to a right quartering headwind at 10 knots, gusting to 18 knots. As the airplane entered ground effect, the nose was pointed 45° right of runway centerline. The instructor then took control of the airplane, along with the student, and tried to correct; however, the airplane drifted left of the runway. The instructor initiated a go-around, but the airplane pitched up, yawed left, and impacted a grass area consistent with an aerodynamic stall. It sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and both wings. The instructor added that she lost control of the airplane and that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions.
Probable cause
Both pilots’ failure to maintain control during the landing flare and the flight instructor’s failure to maintain control during an attempted go-around, in gusting quartering headwind conditions, which resulted in the exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack and an aerodynamic stall at low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA215
- Event ID
- 20210514103084
- Case number
- ERA21LA215
- 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, 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: 2b3f1e15ca697fefd1f41d7caa1093da9365dc67b48b819845f13e74ed717aa7; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:02:47.828Z.