CEN22LA092 · Cessna 172L
Cessna 172L · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Saint Cloud Regional Airport (KSTC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA092
- 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 172L
- 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
- N4209Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Saint Cloud Regional Airport (KSTC), St. Cloud, MNTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1971)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
The pilot reported that while landing following a night instrument flight, on a known contaminated runway and employing aerodynamic braking, the airplane contacted a snow and ice patch and veered to the left. The airplane continued left until it contacted an unplowed snowbank on the left side of the runway and nosed over coming to rest inverted. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings, both ailerons, the vertical stabilizer, and rudder. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot reported that prior to the flight he had filed and instrument flight plan and was aware of a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) that at most 10% of the runway had compacted snow. An area 60-ft wide was plowed and swept.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of control during landing when the airplane encountered ice and snow on the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA092
- Event ID
- 20220104104487
- Case number
- CEN22LA092
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2022-01-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4547cea753b499ebbe3d7f4ef42a41962aee8f4b770170f971c26c6c206f3f82; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:52:10.429Z.