CHI96LA257 · Cessna 188
Cessna 188 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Essentia Health Fargo Heliport (ND45) to Essentia Health Fargo Heliport (ND45)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96LA257
- 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 188
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- N5708G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Essentia Health Fargo Heliport (ND45)To Essentia Health Fargo Heliport (ND45)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 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 › Rudder, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During landing, the airplane encountered what the pilot described as a light, left crosswind. He said he corrected for the crosswind by lowering the left wing and applying opposite rudder to keep the nose straight. He said the airplane began drifting (skipping) to the right. He then applied full left rudder and the airplane ground looped to the right. The onscene investigation found the left wing main spar and skin had wrinkles in them, and the left main landing gear leg was protruding through the right wing.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper use of the rudder to correct the airplane's drift to the right. A factor was the pilot's inadequate compensation for the crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96LA257
- Event ID
- 20001208X06194
- Case number
- CHI96LA257
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-07-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 60f1cc70084328e47e437027cc079564be84fb90d036ca032702317021ad4bc1; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:38:17.955Z.