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172 pilot mistakenly lands in field

By NTSB · September 27, 2016 ·

The Cessna 172 pilot was using an iPad for navigation, and mistakenly landed in a field near Watertown, Conn., rather than his intended destination, an airport with a turf runway.

After landing, he taxied the airplane to a corner of the field and commenced a takeoff roll, estimating the available takeoff distance to be about 600 feet.

Just after takeoff, the left wing hit a tree and the plane subsequently hit the ground, resulting in substantial damage to the left wing and engine firewall and minor injuries to the pilot.

The NTSB determined the probable cause as the pilot’s decision to takeoff from a field which resulted in a collision with trees and the ground. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to correctly identify the destination airport and runway, which resulted in an off-airport landing in the field.

NTSB Identification: ERA14CA430

This September 2014 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.

About NTSB

The National Transportation Safety Board is an independent federal agency charged by Congress with investigating every civil aviation accident in the United States and significant events in the other modes of transportation, including railroad, transit, highway, marine, pipeline, and commercial space. It determines the probable causes of accidents and issues safety recommendations aimed at preventing future occurrences.

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Comments

  1. Dave M says

    September 28, 2016 at 7:43 am

    I don’t what navigation with an iPad has to do with the initial landing at the wrong place, or the subsequent decision to take off from the short field.

    It seems like correlation without causation, to me…

  2. ALVIS says

    September 28, 2016 at 6:03 am

    What drug was he high on with that he couldn’t see that this was a field and not a grass runway of a airport?

  3. Paul says

    September 28, 2016 at 5:55 am

    Just because you can get into it doesn’t mean you can get out of it.

  4. John says

    September 28, 2016 at 5:48 am

    Navigation by iPad has downsides. It’s not like landing at the wrong asphalted airport hasn’t happened to professional aircrews. (It has). The error occurred when the pilot firewalled the throttle before doing some very thorough performance calculations + accurate measurements during a pre-takeoff assessment of the runway environment.

  5. PeterH says

    September 27, 2016 at 7:57 am

    Darwin was right…

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