CEN24LA270 · Cessna R172E
Scott Aviation Cessna R172E · Incident: flight control system malfunction/failure while maneuvering
From Fort Morgan Municipal Airport (FMM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA270
- 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
- Incident
- 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 R172E
- 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
- N23788
- Operator
- Scott Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Morgan Municipal Airport (FMM), Fort Morgan, COTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 57 years (built 1967)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that while retracting the flaps after performing a practice stall recovery during the instructional flight, they heard a loud “pop.” The flight instructor took over control of the airplane from the student pilot and noticed that the ailerons were jammed. The flight instructor elected to make an emergency landing on a highway. While maneuvering toward the highway, the flight instructor did not change the flap configuration and had to use rudder control only for directional control. The flight instructor landed the airplane on the highway without incident. A post incident examination revealed that the left flap inboard track angle brackets were pushed forward and detached from their installed location by the flap support arms. This allowed the flap to contact the aileron, jamming its movement. The failed angle brackets appeared to have been replaced; however, there was no entry of the replacement in the airplane logbooks. Neither the rivets on the left flap inboard angle brackets nor the brackets themselves were painted, indicating that they were not produced by an authorized manufacturer. In combination with the installation of unapproved parts and the condition of the upper left flap roller, which did not rotate smoothly, the flap track slot was likely worn enough to allow the flap support arms to contact the replacement left flap inboard track angle brackets during the retraction of the flaps.
Probable cause
The binding of the left flap due to improper maintenance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA270
- Event ID
- 20240718194713
- Case number
- CEN24LA270
- 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: 323745ca2614c9c6bbcaa5399484e45136d20fc7063d37830ca3bbbf335ae55e; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:03:22.282Z.