The flight instructor told investigators this was the first flight lesson for the student and her first flight lesson as an instructor.
They taxied the Cessna 172 to the active runway at the airport in Miami to complete preflight tasks.
After a normal engine run-up, the flight was instructed to line-up and wait for a Cessna Caravan that had just departed.
After being cleared for takeoff, the flight instructor initiated the takeoff roll and rotated at 60 knots.
When the flight was about 20 to 30 feet above the runway, they experienced a very strong rolling force to the left, which she attempted to correct with a considerable amount of right aileron and right rudder.
She then reduced power to abort the takeoff, but the airplane hit the runway hard and bounced twice, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage.
She taxied off the runway and the airplane was towed to the maintenance hangar.
A pilot who had flown the airplane earlier that day reported the airplane flew “ok” with no discrepancies reported.
Probable Cause: The failure of the flight instructor to maintain the proper rate of descent during the aborted takeoff.
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This August 2021 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.
As a student, I would have never thought of a Caravan as a danger for vortices/wake turbulence, for the simple (and slightly stupid) reason that all of the talk of that early in training focus’ on the big boys, 747s and stuff. I know wingtip vortices are generated by all airfoils, just wouldn’t have thought they could be powerful enough to mess with you from smaller aircraft than the big boys. Good to read prior to experiencing that myself!
I fly a piper arrow III and that has happened to me twice on landing at a nontowered airport in Wyoming where heavies fly in frequently. There were no jets in sight and then all a sudden in a stabilized landing the plane would just be all over the place necessitating a go around followed by a normal uneventful landing.It took me and my CFI a while to figuring it out that it was due to wake turbulence.You need a high index of suspicion.
Sounds to me like this was a case of getting caught in the vortex from the Caravan. If that Caravan was heavily loaded, it would produce some good wingtip vortices and add to that being a turboprop….
No one seems to consider this kind of thing at a NON-Airline airport. And with winds at 4kts, those vortices would have been settling onto the runway as the C172 rotated.
My thinking of the Probable cause: Caravan was a turboprop probably heavily loaded and so generated powerful wingtip vortices that causes control issues for the C172. The Pilot in command of the C172 should have held for a few minutes. The tower should have also warned the C172 of vortices.