NYC96LA039 · Cessna 172N
Sanford Air Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Sanford Seacoast Regional Airport (SFM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96LA039
- 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 172N
- 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
- N734QZ
- Operator
- Sanford Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sanford Seacoast Regional Airport (SFM)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
- 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
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Sanford, ME, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
After the pilot flew a local flight, he returned to the departure airport and landed on runway 32. During the landing roll, the airplane veered left and collided with a snowbank at the edge of the runway. Examination revealed that the 5,000 foot runway was covered with ice along its entire length, and was lightly sanded. No skid marks were present on the surface of the runway, and winds at the airport were reported to be from 260 degrees at 14 knots, gusting to 19.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to adequately compensate for a crosswind during the landing roll, which resulted in a collision with a snowbank. Factors relating to the accident were: ice on the runway and the gusty crosswind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96LA039
- Event ID
- 20001207X05070
- Case number
- NYC96LA039
- 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: 6856e455a90797ed05c3196e085ae46f25ba466f2843c6dc7582c5050b493de9; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:58:40.291Z.