LAX94LA339 · Cessna 172
Sundance Flying Club Cessna 172 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Palo Alto Airport (PAO) to Lampson Field (1O2)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94LA339
- 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 172
- 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
- N9447E
- Operator
- Sundance Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, CATo Lampson Field (1O2), CA
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 on ground/water
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Directional control, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Proper alignment, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AT THE CONCLUSION OF A CROSS-COUNTRY FLIGHT, THE PILOT MADE A TRAFFIC PATTERN APPROACH AND LANDED ON RUNWAY 28. THE PILOT REPORTED THAT THE AIRPLANE TOUCHED DOWN WITHIN THE FIRST 1/3 OF THE RUNWAY, AND DURING ROLLOUT, ENCOUNTERED A WIND BETWEEN 180 AND 270 DEGREES AT 10 TO 25 KNOTS. THE PILOT REPORTED THAT DESPITE ALL HER EFFORTS, SHE WAS UNABLE TO MAINTAIN A GROUND TRACK DOWN THE RUNWAY, AND SHE LOST CONTROL OF THE AIRPLANE. THE AIRPLANE VEERED OFF THE RUNWAY AND ENTERED A DITCH. FOUR MONTHS EARLIER, THE PILOT HAD BEEN ISSUED A PRIVATE PILOT CERTIFICATE.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the existing cross wind conditions, and failure to maintain directional control of the airplane during landing rollout.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94LA339
- Event ID
- 20001206X02092
- Case number
- LAX94LA339
- 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: 63acf3907c5112c1f103e37173eaa7d3327e1a8c861b0859e0a8800af97a1bd5; retrieved 2026-09-23T00:46:15.273Z.