CEN22LA445 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Mathews Memorial Airport (8C4) to Monticello Regional Airport (MXO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA445
- 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 172M
- 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
- N5244R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mathews Memorial Airport (8C4), Tipton, IATo Monticello Regional Airport (MXO), Monticello, IA
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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 › Action/decision
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 reported that the brakes were not effective during landing rollout. He allowed the airplane to depart the paved runway into the adjacent grass area to slow down. The airplane encountered a shallow ditch which damaged the fuselage immediately aft of the firewall, resulting in substantial damage to the airplane. The firewall and nose landing gear were also damaged. A mechanic completed a postaccident examination and was unable to identify any anomalies with respect to the brake system. The mechanic commented that the brake system can be affected if the parking brake is partially engaged at takeoff; however, the pilot reported that the parking brake was not used during the flight. The mechanic noted the airplane departed the pavement about 800 ft from the end of the 4,400 ft runway and encountered a drainage ditch. The airplane traveled about 600 ft past the ditch before it stopped. Based upon this distance, the pilot likely landed long and with excessive airspeed which resulted in an inability to slow the airplane sufficiently before encountering the end of the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain a proper approach airspeed and glidepath which resulted in a long landing and his inability to stop the airplane on available runway and the subsequent runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA445
- Event ID
- 20230816192881
- Case number
- CEN22LA445
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 62ea1f1c6a6280c5894d5a22d9ef6f62a4fa974b7c631e7da2b7fd7577bd7fd3; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:00:37.863Z.