CEN21LA397 · Cessna 172 S
Cessna 172 S · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Easterwood Field (CLL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA397
- 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 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
- N55245
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Easterwood Field (CLL), College Station, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2014)
- 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
- 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 pilot approached the airport to land with the wind generally aligned with the runway. The pilot reported that while on short final, he received a traffic alert from an on-board system alerting him to traffic on a short final. He continued the approach perceiving that performing a go-around would result in a potential mid-air collision. As he flared the airplane the wind quickly shifted to a direct crosswind which resulted in the right main landing gear touching down earlier than expected. The pilot applied a slight increase in power to prevent the nose landing gear from impacting the runway. The wind then reportedly shifted to a direct tailwind and the pilot lost control of the airplane. The nosewheel contacted the runway hard at which time the pilot performed a go-around. He landed the airplane without further incident. An examination of the airplane found substantial damage to the firewall and lower fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA397
- Event ID
- 20210907103800
- Case number
- CEN21LA397
- 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: 9037e1dabd3e5153a6bebd8f4c1f4f1d4876de06fea2da75ac5de003b4f821ed; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:29:15.300Z.