FTW99LA063 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Grand Prairie Municipal Airport (GPM) to 4T6
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99LA063
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172M
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N80253
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Prairie Municipal Airport (GPM), Grand Prairie, TXTo 4T6
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the FAA inspector who responded to the accident site, the 24 hour student pilot had flown with his flight instructor from the home base airport to a nearby uncontrolled airport for a supervised solo flight. After a few practice takeoffs and landings at the uncontrolled airport, the flight instructor exited the airplane and cleared the student pilot for a solo flight. The student pilot reported that while on short final for runway 18, 'he caught a gust of wind from the left which pushed the left wing up and banked the airplane to the right.' The student added that he applied full engine power to perform a go-around, yet the nose pitched down. The student stated that the airplane impacted the ground on the west side of the runway in a nose low attitude with the right wing down. The airplane came to rest in the inverted position, approximately 100 feet from the edge of the runway. The flaps were found extended approximately 15 degrees. The winds at the time of the accidents were estimated to be from 150 degrees at 15 knots, gusting to 20.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to compensate for a crosswind resulting in a loss of control. Factors were the gusty high winds and the flight instructor's improper decision to allow the student to solo during high winds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99LA063
- Event ID
- 20001204X00055
- Case number
- FTW99LA063
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bbcc6117f3d572734c87e34545756aa4737417b5eb42ab0ff6244e6a9c16dc6c; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:03:40.968Z.