FTW97LA163
1997-04-21 · MCKINNEY, Texas, United States · None · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed
Airport TKI
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
the student pilot's failure to maintain directional control on the ground after recovery from a bounced landing.
Factual narrative
On April 21, 1997, at 1321 central daylight time, a Cessna 172P airplane, N54153, was substantially damaged following a loss of control during landing roll at McKinney Municipal Airport, near McKinney, Texas. The student pilot, sole occupant in the airplane, was not injured. The airplane was owned by private individuals and operated by Addison Air Training under Title 14 CFR Part 91. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed for the instructional solo flight which originated from Addison, Texas, approximately 1 hour and 6 minutes before the accident. No flight plan had been filed. According to the instructor pilot, the student pilot was attempting his second landing to the south at McKinney Municipal Airport during his first supervised solo flight. The first landing was normal and uneventful. On the second landing the "student porpoised the airplane [and] recovered. After recovering, the student slammed on the brakes and ran off the runway. The aircraft proceeded into a muddy ditch, at which time the nose wheel dug into the mud, broke off from the aircraft and the aircraft flipped over on its back." Examination of the aircraft by a FAA inspector revealed that the nose gear was folded aft and both propeller blades were bent. Both wing tips were bent downward outboard of the flaps and the vertical fin and rudder were also damaged. According to the instructor pilot, the student pilot was attempting his second landing during his first supervised solo flight. The first landing was normal and uneventful. However, on the second landing, the 'student porpoised the airplane [and] recovered. After recovering, the student slammed on the brakes and ran off the runway. The aircraft proceeded into a muddy ditch, at which time the nose wheel dug into the mud, broke off from the aircraft and the aircraft flipped over on its back.' Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_1997_FTW97LA163.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Search this event elsewhere
External sources are reported, not agency: signal that something happened, not fact about what happened.
- TallyAero Live Wire Aviation press
- NTSB CAROL Agency ↗
- NTSB Docket Agency ↗
- Aviation Safety Network Aviation press ↗
- Kathryn's Report Aviation press ↗
- Aviation Herald Aviation press ↗
- AVweb Aviation press ↗
- Pilots of America Community ↗
- Reddit /r/flying Community ↗
- FlightAware Aviation press ↗
- AOPA accident database Aviation press ↗
- Google News News ↗
- DuckDuckGo News ↗
Related research
Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (loss of control). All research papers
- Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons 2025 · Journal article (JAAER) A Scoping Review of Aviation Loss of Control Inflight Research
Loss of control – inflight (LOC-I) contributes to aircraft accidents at unacceptably high rates. Significant industry efforts and research have aimed to improve LOC-I prevention, detection, and recove…
- SKYbrary (Eurocontrol) 2024 · SKYbrary article Loss of Control In-Flight (LOC-I) — SKYbrary Knowledge Base
SKYbrary comprehensive knowledge-base entry on Loss of Control In-Flight — definitions, contributing factors, accident case studies (Air France 447, Colgan 3407), and prevention strategies.
- Semantic Scholar 2024 · Article (International Conference on Networking and Services) Risk Assessment of Loss of Control In-Flight Trajectories for Urban Air Mobility Safety
In Urban Air Mobility (UAM), maintaining a minimum separation between aircraft is a safety requirement, which becomes challenging amidst congested air traffic and off-nominal conditions, such as Loss …
- NTSB Aircraft Accident Reports 2022 · Accident report Loss of Control on Takeoff in Icing Conditions — Citation 560XL
Cessna Citation 560XL fatal takeoff icing accident, March 2018. Investigation of a Citation 560XL loss-of-control takeoff accident in icing conditions.
- Semantic Scholar 2021 · Article (Aviation) ANALYSIS OF GENERAL AVIATION FIXED-WING AIRCRAFT ACCIDENTS INVOLVING INFLIGHT LOSS OF CONTROL USING A STATE-BASED APPROACH
Inflight loss of control (LOC-I) is a significant cause of General Aviation (GA) fixed-wing aircraft accidents. The United States National Transportation Safety Board’s database provides a rich source…
- NASA NTRS 2021 · Presentation Use of Design of Experiments in Determining Neural Network Architectures for Loss of Control Detection
Abstract—We describe empirical methods for selecting a neural network architecture to implement belief state inference on generic commercial transport aircraft.