FTW98LA212
1998-05-10 · GEORGETOWN, Texas, United States · None · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed
Airport GTU
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
inadequate supervision by the flight instructor (CFI), by failing to ensure that the student obtained and/or maintained sufficient airspeed, which led to an inadvertent stall and collision with the terrain.
Factual narrative
On May 10, 1998, at 1145 central daylight time, a Cessna 172P airplane, N99570, was substantially damaged following a loss of control during initial takeoff climb near Georgetown, Texas. The flight instructor and the student pilot were not injured. The airplane was owned and operated by I Can Aviation Inc., of Georgetown, Texas, under Title 14 CFR Part 91. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed for the local instructional flight for which no flight plan was filed. The flight departed from the Georgetown Municipal Airport approximately 30 minutes prior to the accident. According to law enforcement personnel that responded to the accident site, the 18 hour student pilot was undergoing a phase check with his flight instructor. While demonstrating a soft field takeoff from runway 36, the student pilot held the nose of the airplane in a very high attitude after the airplane broke ground. The flight instructor stated that "the airspeed decayed rapidly and the airplane stalled." He added that he took the controls "too late to rescue the airplane." Subsequent to the stall, the airplane landed hard on one wheel and started to drifted off the runway. The operator reported that the airplane came to rest in the infield area, approximately 65 feet from the runway. Examination of the airplane by the FAA inspector revealed that both wings, the fuselage and the engine firewall sustained structural damage. According to law enforcement personnel that responded to the accident site, the 18 hour student pilot was undergoing a phase check with his flight instructor (CFI). While demonstrating a soft field takeoff from runway 36, the student held the nose of the airplane in a very high attitude after the airplane lifted off. The CFI stated that 'the airspeed decayed rapidly and the airplane stalled.' He said that he took the controls 'too late to rescue the airplane.' Subsequent to the stall, the airplane touched down hard on one wheel and started to drift off the runway. The operator reported that the airplane came to rest in the infield area, approximately 65 feet from the runway. Examination of the airplane by an FAA inspector revealed that both wings, the fuselage, and the engine firewall had sustained structural damage. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_1998_FTW98LA212.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
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Related research
Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (stall, loss of control). All research papers
- Semantic Scholar 2016 · Article (Interacción) Trajectory Recovery System: Angle of Attack Guidance for Inflight Loss of Control
This paper describes the design and development of an ecological display to aid pilots in the recovery of an In-Flight Loss of Control event due to a Stall (ILOC-S).
- NTSB Aircraft Accident Reports 2010 · Accident report Loss of Control on Approach — Colgan Air Flight 3407
Colgan Air 3407 / Continental Connection (Q400) Buffalo NY, February 12, 2009 — 50 fatalities. Definitive investigation of the Colgan 3407 stall-stick-pusher crash on approach to Buffalo.
- NASA NTRS 2026 · Conference Paper Computational Analysis of Steady State Aerodynamics of Transonic Truss-Braced Wing Configuration in Deep Stall
This study presents a computational investigation of steady state aerodynamics of the Subsonic Ultra-Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR) Transonic Truss-Braced Wing (TTBW) configuration over a wide range …
- 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 …