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ANC25LA020 · Cessna 172M

20 Feb 2025 · Kapolei, HI, United States

Pacific Flight Academy Cessna 172M · Accident: aircraft wake turbulence encounter during initial climb

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Event

NTSB case
ANC25LA020
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
Ongoing
API-reported fatalities
0 · all aircraft and ground
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
N19867
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From not recordedTo not recorded
Aircraft age
Not recorded
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
Aircraft wake turbulence encounter
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

On February 20, 2025, about 1110 Hawaii-Aleutian standard time, a Cessna 172M airplane, N19867, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Kapolei, Hawaii. The flight instructor and student pilot reported minor injuries. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 instructional flight. According to the flight instructor, after the student pilot completed six touch-and-go landings on runway 4L at the Kalaeloa Airport (PHJR), the flight instructor took control of the airplane while on downwind to demonstrate a power-off, 180 ° landing on runway 4L. As the instructor maneuvered the airplane from downwind, to base leg, and then to final approach, he said he heard the tower controller clear a Boeing C-17 Globemaster airplane for takeoff on runway 4R. The flight instructor reported that after touchdown on runway 4L, he retracted the flaps and began another takeoff. As the airplane passed through about 100 ft. agl, the airplane rolled abruptly to the left and the nose of the airplane pitched down sharply. The flight instructor said he was able to level the wings and partially arrest the rapid descent just before the main landing gear wheels struck the surface of an adjacent taxiway, which subsequently bounced the airplane back into the air. During the collision, the airplane’s windshield shattered, which in turn removed the flight instructor’s headset. As the airplane became airborne again, and to avoid a collision with a building and a stand of trees, the instructor pilot elected to go around. During the go around, the flight instructor told the student pilot to declare an emergency and prepare for an emergency landing at PHJR. A subsequent emergency landing was accomplished on runway 22R at PHJR. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings, firewall, and fuselage. The wreckage has been moved to a secure location pending further examination.

Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ANC25LA020
Event ID
20250224199751
Case number
ANC25LA020
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: 99d04e617972785a5c81cbfec0facc2771dd3597d9262b4cfdd77e5f2e4e0e83; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:41:14.930Z.