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CHI96LA075 · Cessna 172N

12 Jan 1996 · Grand Forks, ND, United States

B & B Partnership Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control on ground/water while taxiing

From Grand Forks International Airport (GFK) to an unrecorded destination

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Event

NTSB case
CHI96LA075
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
N6338D
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Grand Forks International Airport (GFK)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
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 › Aircraft control, not maintained

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The student pilot was taxiing on the icy taxiway during his second supervised solo flight. He stated a gust of wind caught the airplane's tail and swung the airplane around. The airplane struck a snowbank, and the wing and propeller impacted the ground. The student pilot later stated that the wind had picked up quite a bit from the time he was out with his instructor to the time of the accident. After landing, he decided not to take off again because the winds had really picked up.

Probable cause

the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane while taxiing. Factors in the accident were the icy condition of the taxiway and the high gusting wind.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CHI96LA075
Event ID
20001208X05111
Case number
CHI96LA075
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: 60d19c52d128a91e430ac8c06e4a1686e797ed682f312fb95f219277bb5f4ad8; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:53:48.742Z.