CEN23LA159 · Cessna 172S
Archimedes Aviation Cessna 172S · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (KAUS) to Gillespie County Airport (T82)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA159
- 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 172S
- 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
- N478SP
- Operator
- Archimedes Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (KAUS), Austin, TXTo Gillespie County Airport (T82), Fredericksburg, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 25 years (built 1998)
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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
- 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 pilot stated that when she checked the weather inbound to the airport, the wind was reported as calm. However, the wind may have shifted resulting in a tailwind on final approach. When it became apparent that the airplane was going to land long, she added full power to attempt a go-around. However, the airplane porpoised, the nose landing gear struck the runway and collapsed, and the airplane veered left and departed the runway. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the forward fuselage. The pilot reported there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. She noted that initiating the go-around earlier may have prevented the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control during an attempted go-around resulting in abnormal contact with the runway pavement and a runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA159
- Event ID
- 20230419107086
- Case number
- CEN23LA159
- 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: 08747b18498f43cb5839ad5a8b681aace81d1ec2375fc4d69853104e99f27a7e; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:31:39.069Z.