ERA26LA143 · Cessna 172 S
Chapel Hill Flying Club Cessna 172 S · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Raleigh Executive Jetport (TTA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA143
- 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
- N972WW
- Operator
- Chapel Hill Flying Club Inc Dba
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Raleigh Executive Jetport (TTA), Sanford, NCTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 24 years (built 2002)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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 › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was for the pilot to gain experience with soft and short field landings with a flight instructor. The pilot stated that after departing, they proceeded to a nearby airport, whose runway was about 2,500 ft-long by 36 ft-wide. After completing a successful landing, they remained in the pattern for another short field landing. While on final approach, the airplane was too far to the right of the runway centerline. At an altitude of about 50 to 60 ft above ground level, the airplane’s right wing struck the tops of trees that were close the runway edge and were difficult to see due to the position of the sun. After impacting the trees, the pilot performed a go-around. The airplane operated normally and the pilot and the instructor decided to return to an airport with longer runway. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the right wing had sustained substantial damage. Both the pilot and the instructor reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from trees while on final approach for landing. Contributing to the accident were the flight instructor’s inadequate remedial actions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA143
- Event ID
- 20260309202621
- Case number
- ERA26LA143
- 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, 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: f703a6544acb85d400baf632d2268ecb7ab160273fd4a89b34a0403fa53e77bb; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:56:50.234Z.