ERA26LA023 · Cessna 152
Florida Flyers Academy Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA023
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N95005
- Operator
- Florida Flyers Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1984)
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident takeoff was the student pilot’s second solo flight lesson. She reported that the airplane began to climb with difficulty from the 8,001 ft-long runway, while the airspeed was increasing. She checked the cockpit instrumentation, and everything appeared normal, except the altitude and airspeed. She further described having difficulty pitching the airplane up and it struck trees at the end of the runway. Review of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast data revealed that the airplane was traveling at 100 kts groundspeed just prior to the collision with trees. The airplane came to rest in a marsh, upright and partially submerged. Examination of the wreckage by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed substantial damage to the left wing and fuselage. Further examination of the wreckage revealed that the flaps were near the 15° extended position, and the elevator trim was near the full nose-down position. Based on this information it is likely that the combined position of the elevator trim resulted in the student pilot’s difficulty controlling the airplane’s pitch during initial climb.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to properly set the elevator trim prior to takeoff, which resulted in her inability to effectively control the airplane’s pitch and a collision with trees at the end of the runway during initial climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA023
- Event ID
- 20251027201924
- Case number
- ERA26LA023
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6786584c54b104105b36d8f8bad330c9cc3a85457a01601f083ab745e84f607a; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:30:32.406Z.