ERA26LA187 · Cessna 172 P
Civil Air Patrol Cessna 172 P · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA187
- 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 P
- 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
- N99467
- Operator
- Civil Air Patrol
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1985)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 on ground
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that the purpose of the local flight was to perform an onboarding evaluation/training flight with a pilot that he had not previously flown the accident aircraft make and model. The flight departed and the pilot performed various uneventful flight maneuvers before returning to the departure airport. Both pilots reported that throughout the flight there had been a positive exchange of flight controls any time the controls were passed from one pilot to the other. Upon returning, the flight instructor demonstrated a stabilized approach and landing for the pilot receiving instruction. The pilot receiving instruction took the controls for a “normal” takeoff. The flight instructor reported that when the takeoff roll began, the airplane began to travel left of the runway centerline. The pilot receiving instruction then overcorrected resulting in the airplane being right of the runway centerline. He told the pilot receiving instruction to correct his heading, which resulted in another overcorrection. The airplane traveled left of centerline and continued toward the left side of the runway. The flight instructor attempted to add right rudder control input and reported that the airplane momentarily aligned with the “runway sideline” before the pilot receiving instruction added more left rudder and he was overpowered. The pilot receiving instruction reported that when the airplane began to veer off the runway centerline he corrected but “needed more pressure than expected” before the airplane veered left. The airplane departed the runway surface, and the flight instructor attempted to “hop” over the precision approach path indicator system, during which the right main landing gear impacted the system and was separated. The airplane touched down and veered right across the runway and an adjacent grassy area before coming to rest on a taxiway which resulted in substantial damage to the right horizontal stabilizer. The flight instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot receiving instruction’s failure to maintain aircraft directional control during the takeoff roll. Contributing was the flight crew’s failure to ensure a positive exchange of flight controls during the takeoff roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA187
- Event ID
- 20260427202891
- Case number
- ERA26LA187
- 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: 15a3060e9d0ea16428866fca6ff3a682e6efb2bab0141f14782717ca0b894166; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:19:57.280Z.