LAX99LA079 · Cessna 152
Westwind Aviation Academy Cessna 152 · Accident: on ground/water encounter with weather while taxiing
From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA079
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N96640
- Operator
- Westwind Aviation Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT)To not recorded
- 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
- Taxi · from runway
- 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
- On ground/water encounter with weather
- 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(cfi) › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
- Pilot in command(cfi) › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Weather condition › Dust devil/whirlwind
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certified flight instructor (CFI) reported that he decided to complete the instructional lesson with his 25-hour student pilot after flying in the local area and performing three touch-and-go landings. The CFI indicated that he observed a dust devil near the airport while on base leg, but its proximity to the airplane's planned course did not look close enough to result in his aborting the approach and landing. The CFI stated he believed that if he hurried up he could land before the dust devil became a factor. After landing without mishap, the crew turned off the runway and the dust devil contacted the airplane. Control was lost control and the airplane nosed over.
Probable cause
The CFI's loss of airplane control upon encountering a dust devil due to his improper in-flight decision to land in proximity to the observed adverse weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA079
- Event ID
- 20001204X00082
- Case number
- LAX99LA079
- 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: fe4c3cc22575463dde7fcd0c8af515c7e70d8935e56f461da96297899c5b7c99; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:58:23.815Z.