ERA25LA118 · Cessna 172 S
Cavu Aero Cessna 172 S · Accident: landing area undershoot
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA118
- 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 172 S
- 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
- N1159K
- Operator
- Cavu Aero
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2006)
- 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
- 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
- Landing area undershoot
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the flight instructor, the student pilot had previously completed three-night landings to a full stop and taxi back during the dual instructional flight. On the fourth attempt, the instructor elected to simulate a loss of engine power. While on final approach, the student pilot aligned the airplane with the runway centerline, and the flight instructor thought that the airplane would be able to reach the runway threshold. As the airplane approached the runway, the instructor described that the airplane was in a “flat position” and struck the ground, short of the runway. The nose landing gear was displaced upwards and aft which resulted in substantial damage to the airplane’s lower firewall. The flight instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The student pilot and instructor stated that they believed that the runway end identifier lights were not operating during their flight and that only the two outer left and right green lights were illuminated for the entirety of the flight, including the preceding three landings, which factored into their depth perception for touchdown. During correspondence with the student pilot following the accident, he provided an annotated aerial image where he circled the lights he believed to be inoperative at the time of the accident. According to the airport manager, the lights referenced by the student, which appeared to be the runway end and edge lighting, were operational at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to maintain an appropriate glide path and the flight instructor’s inadequate monitoring of the landing approach, which resulted in the airplane contacting the ground short of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA118
- Event ID
- 20250213199695
- Case number
- ERA25LA118
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2025-01-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5b85920367159c207c3ef4e1ca72c1279c65278aad9d26720f46fc762654d397; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:39:44.047Z.