ERA22FA218 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22FA218
- 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
- 2 · 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 172
- 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
- N6413B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 65 years (built 1957)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
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 was conducting a personal flight with three passengers aboard. Witnesses and airport surveillance video revealed that the airplane took off to the north and immediately entered a nose-high attitude at slow speed while not climbing. The pilot then began a left 270° turn and crossed the departure end of the runway on an easterly heading. The airplane impacted terrain east of the runway and a postimpact fire ensued. The wreckage displayed signatures consistent with the airplane having been in an aerodynamic stall at the time of impact. Witnesses described that the engine was running during the accident flight. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of a pre-existing mechanical failure or malfunction.
Postaccident weight and balance calculations revealed that the airplane’s weight at takeoff was about 224 pounds, or nearly 10% more than the maximum allowable gross weight. One of the surviving passengers reported that the pilot did not ask for his weight and that he did not observe the pilot performing any preflight weight and balance calculation. Based on this information, it is likely that the pilot’s failure to perform weight and balance calculations resulted in the airplane taking off while overweight, which resulted in its inability to climb. Ultimately the airplane to exceed its critical angle of attack and entered an aerodynamic stall from which the pilot could not recover.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to perform a preflight weight and balance calculation and his operation of the flight at an excessive takeoff weight, resulting in an exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack after liftoff and an aerodynamic stall from which the pilot was unable to recover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22FA218
- Event ID
- 20220503105040
- Case number
- ERA22FA218
- 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: 1d3c90a2850eccb1a62f2bfc9a40281e4b0d7fc63431bcfadaef8e43e173073a; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:43:54.311Z.