The student pilot was conducting solo touch-and-go landings and takeoffs at the airport in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
During the landing roll of the eighth touch-and-go landing, he retracted the flaps to 0° and applied full engine power for takeoff.
The Cessna 152 began drifting “hard” to the left and he applied right rudder, however, the plane departed the left side of the runway, hit a runway marker, and came to rest in a nose down attitude.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the firewall.
The student pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable Cause: The student pilot’s failure to maintain directional control during takeoff, which resulted in a runway excursion and impact with a runway marker.
“Touch and goes” seem efficient but do they build useful habits for real flying? (and 7-8 in a session?) Distraction during a “rolling clean-up” obviously caught this pilot (and power application without right rudder took it into the weeds). Was this student ready to fly solo?
This April 2019 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.
I’ll also chime in and say I don’t see anything wrong with touch-and-goes. Both my CFI for tricycle gear and CFI for my tailwheel endorsement had me doing them. My CFIs always drilled into me that each “landing” was a go-around. We’re not on fire, engine’s still turning, therefore landing was optional.
In the case here, I don’t see how the touch & go had any bearing on what happened next.
As far as hitting an unexpected crosswind, that’s part of flying. I fault the CFI for not dragging the student out on some nasty, gusty, challenging days before letting them solo. I had training days where the local pilots were avoiding flying, but my CFI dragged me up there. Crosswinds were definitely near if not exceeding the aircraft’s rated limits. 10 touch & goes on one day and no two had the same winds. Even different parts of the runway had different direction winds going on. Wasn’t a fun day of flying, but I learned a lot.
It also doesn’t hurt to ask for a “wind check” when doing pattern work or even when coming in and the ATIS is a bit stale. Instead of a radio check, I always ask for a wind check. Might as well get some useful information while testing the radio.
There’s nothing wrong with touch and goes. They allow more repetitions and that is beneficial. I would look at the weather forecast. I was lucky to be able to recover the TAF issued two hours before the time of the accident. It forecast a huge change in the winds to start at 1400Z, about 30 minutes after the time of the accident. So if anything, I would point to that factor as a questionable go/no-go decision. These winds were not reflected in the METARs until more than two hours after the accident. But as often happens, gust fronts start occurring well before the time predicted in the TAF, and the general recommendation is to allow at least an hour’s leeway for changes forecast in the TAF, which I would increase substantially for students.
TAF KLNS 081132Z 0812/0912 07006KT P6SM SCT025 FM081400 25012G22KT
P6SM OVC035 FM081600 28015G25KT P6SM BKN050 FM090100
26006KT P6SM SCT040 BKN250=
When reading the NTSB reports, one finds the wind calm, but variable but not gusting. Something is wrong with this. If the wind is calm it is not variable.
What this student said happened, matches a cross-wind gust where they did not have in the correct cross wind settings of aileron. One can’t just stick it to the rudder to control this. So the wind picks up the one wing and that takes the weight of the one main, and the plane will skitter across the runway.
If one learns to fly at an airport with narrow runways and cross wind, one learns that you have to use the correct correction all the way to tie down. And I’m told that this is even more of a problem for tail-wheel aircraft.
Oh, and I’ve had to take control from a CFI once because they misread the winds and we were doing the same thing (sliding sideways across a runway). So yes, even CFIs can misread it and use the wrong correction.