ERA24LA384 · Cessna 172L
Cessna 172L · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA384
- 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 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
- N19703
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1972)
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor explained that immediately after the airplane lifted from the runway, a parachutist beneath a fully fully-deployed canopy appeared from above and to the left of the high-winged airplane about 15-20 ft above ground level. The parachutist was aligned to cross the runway from left to right immediately to his front, so he turned right to raise the left wing in hopes of striking the parachute instead of the parachutist. Witnesses described the collision, pieces separating from the airplane, and the parachutist “skidding” across the runway before coming to rest unhurt. The instructor maneuvered the substantially substantially-damaged airplane and landed it successfully with both occupants emerging unhurt. According to the operator of the skydiving activity, the parachutist failed to enter the area surrounding the designated drop zone properly and into the wind, but instead overshot the landing zone in the downwind direction and crossed in front of the departing airplane. In a written statement, the parachutist explained that he was a “student” and that he lacked control of the canopy when he experienced a “sudden change of winds.” He stated that the wind “pushed” him in the direction of the departure runway. The parachutist added that because he was a student in a “highly good” training environment, that he would improve his “skills and experience” with more training.
Probable cause
The parachutist’s failure to control his canopy which resulted in a downwind landing, an overshoot of the drop zone, and collision with a departing airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA384
- Event ID
- 20240918195138
- Case number
- ERA24LA384
- 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. 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: e6985df6b851ea67761a2a2d078d70683e62e8d3e58e5855242bf94f510303fb; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:16:52.464Z.