ERA26LA255 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA255
- 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 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
- N6814H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1975)
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and the student pilot had just completed a training flight, but still needed to fly back to their home airport. A friend of the pilot sat in the back of the airplane during the training flight. The student pilot asked the instructor if his friend, who had no flight training experience other than a discovery flight, could sit up front for the return flight. The instructor agreed and provided clear instructions to the friend to not touch any of the flight controls during the flight. The friend was asked if he had any questions about the takeoff and he said he had none. During the takeoff roll, the instructor said the friend tapped the left brake with his foot, which resulted in a “slight bump” of the airplane. This motion scared the friend, who then panicked and grabbed the control yoke and pulled it all the way back while moving it to the left. The left wing briefly touched the ground and the friend repeatedly screamed, “I’m sorry!” The friend did not let go of the controls, and the instructor had to wrestle him and repeatedly tell him to let go and that he had the controls. The instructor said he needed both hands to try and overcome the force the friend had on the controls. The instructor was able to get the airplane’s wings level just before it collided with a fence, which resulted in substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. The friend told first responders that he was the one that crashed the airplane and that “it was all his fault.”
Probable cause
The passenger’s abrupt manipulation of the flight controls during takeoff, which resulted in a loss of directional control and collision with a fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA255
- Event ID
- 20260701203294
- Case number
- ERA26LA255
- 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: 573d7608db9cf910a4041aaa9932d8d0391f8d5de45179323e53ccf0afc57abe; retrieved 2026-09-17T05:13:11.458Z.