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Atlas / NTSB / WPR25LA105

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event WPR25LA105

2025-02-20 Cottonwood, Arizona, United States Airport · P52 None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N726ER

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

CESSNA 172S

Year of manufacture

2023 · 2 years old at event

Engine

LYCOMING IO-360-L2A (180 hp)

Seats / Engines

4 seats · 1 engine

Last airworthiness date

20230822

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A9BA4A

Registrant of record

EMBRY-RIDDLE AERONAUTICAL UNIVERSITY INC

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot undergoing instructions’ loss of aircraft control during landing, and the flight instructor’s failure to promptly intervene.

Factual narrative

The pilot was practicing landing maneuvers with their flight instructor. The early part of the flight was uneventful, and they decided to work on short-field landings, all of which resulted in go-arounds. They subsequently started to practice power-off 180° landings, and on the third landing attempt, the airplane was high on the approach. The student performed a forward slip maneuver, however the airplane was traveling too fast on touchdown, and it bounced. The nose then dropped, and the nosewheel struck the runway. The flight instructor took the flight controls just as the nosewheel struck the runway again and added power to initiate a go-around. The airplane sustained substantial damage during the sequence, however the airplane performance appeared unaffected and the crew continued training unaware of the damage. It was not until after landing, when the lesson was complete, that they noticed damage to the propeller tip and forward fuselage structure. The pilot and flight instructor reported no preimpact mechanical anomalies or malfunctions that could have precluded normal operation. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).

  • Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Directional control-Not attained/maintained
  • Personnel issues-Action/decision-Info processing/decision-Identification/recognition-Instructor/check pilot
  • Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Student/instructed pilot
  • Personnel issues-Action/decision-Action-Delayed action-Instructor/check pilot

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2025_WPR25LA105.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (icing, go-around). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗