SEA97LA031 · Cessna 152
Westflight Aviation Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Bolinder Field Tooele Valley Airport (TVY) to Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA031
- 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
- N4713Q
- Operator
- Westflight Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bolinder Field Tooele Valley Airport (TVY), Tooele, UTTo Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC)
- 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 · 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 in flight
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness observed the airplane a few seconds before it touched down on runway 32. (According to him), the airplane appeared to be in a steep descent, and it hit the runway hard. It bounced about 10 to 15 feet up in the air and came back down, remaining on the ground and rolling forward. To the witness, the airplane appeared to be somewhat nose down, and it rolled a distance before nosing over. The student pilot, who was flying solo, stated that he was cautioned about wake turbulence when he was cleared to land. Radar data showed a Learjet had landed on runway 35, which had a crossing approach path, about 1 minute and 14 seconds before the accident aircraft. (Runway 32 and 35 intersected at the approach ends.) The student pilot said that before landing, the airplane ballooned very slightly, and he re-flared again, then he '. . . was suddenly and very violently blown almost directly sideways . . .' Winds were from 360 degrees at 10 knots before his landing clearance. The student reported that he had 52.9 hours of total time, including 13.1 hours solo time.
Probable cause
the student pilot's improper in-flight planning/decision, which allowed his aircraft to encounter wake turbulence from a Lear Jet, and/or the student allowed the aircraft to stall. The crosswind component from the quartering headwind was a possible factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA031
- Event ID
- 20001208X07120
- Case number
- SEA97LA031
- 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: 399c46a692c0a24b61db44ca3ad33ed7dd1c08266b5599ef4ba0de71fafb2e20; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:45:42.893Z.