WPR21LA324 · Cessna 172 G
Cessna 172 G · Accident: aircraft structural failure while maneuvering
From Coeur D'Alene Airport - Pappy Boyington Field (COE) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA324
- 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 172 G
- 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
- N4110L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coeur D'Alene Airport - Pappy Boyington Field (COE), Coeur d'Alene, IDTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1966)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Aircraft structural failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial Possible conflict
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that before demonstrating spin recovery to the student pilot, he confirmed that the weight and balance met the requirements for the utility category. The flight instructor stated that as the spin reached the fully developed state, he began to execute the recovery procedure by reducing power to idle, ailerons remained at neutral, opposite rudder control to stop the turn, and the elevator forward. During the recovery, he noted that the airspeed did not exceed 110 mph which was 12 mph below the design maneuvering speed of 122 mph. Subsequently, the windshield shattered during the recovery process. The flight instructor immediately landed the airplane at the airport that he was maneuvering over without further incident. An examination of the airplane revealed that about half of the windshield separated. The airplane fuselage, wings and empennage were not damaged. The reason for the windshield failure was not determined.
Probable cause
The failure of the windshield during spin recovery for reasons that were not determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA324
- Event ID
- 20210817103716
- Case number
- WPR21LA324
- 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: 0cb03532568ecefa7d7b86be73d4b1f00d334d2e92a5c6c721ec1be07e26ed43; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:25:52.733Z.