ERA25LA311 · Cessna 172 S
WIFA (Washington International Flight Academy) Cessna 172 S · Accident: landing area overshoot
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA311
- 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
- N505LP
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 25 years (built 2000)
- 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 overshoot
- 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
- 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
The flight instructor reported that the student pilot had an tablet computer in her lap. During the landing flare, the tablet interfered with the student pilot’s control input. In an attempt to assist the student, the flight instructor briefly diverted her attention from the landing, to shift the tablet away from the control yoke. When the flight instructor looked back outside, she realized that the airplane had floated more than halfway down the runway and had not touched down. She took control of the airplane but decided not to attempt a go-around due to trees at the runway end. The flight instructor applied full braking, but when she realized that the airplane was not going to stop on the runway, she steered left down a small embankment, rather than risk a larger embankment at the end of the runway. The nose landing gear partially collapsed, and the airplane came to rest upright off the left side end of the runway. The forward portion of the airplane’s fuselage was substantially damaged during the accident sequence. The flight instructor added that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions with the airplane.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s distraction during landing, which resulted in a long landing and subsequent runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA311
- Event ID
- 20250825200852
- Case number
- ERA25LA311
- 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: f7a60b06b92ca2b6e30abefba8c5143396306946a90b2df3b6e82fec66cc4864; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:15:18.492Z.