NYC97LA027 · Lake LA-4
Lake LA-4 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From 7D2 · Troy, MI to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA027
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Lake LA-4 Possible conflict
- Aircraft type
- Lake LA-4
- 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
- N7632L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 7D2 · Troy, MITo 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that about 30 miles from the airport, the airplane encountered snow and then approximately '...10 miles out encountered freezing rain/sleet/snow.' According to the pilot, '...airplane was flying poorly because of ice but still controllable. At one point need[ed] substantial right rudder to maintain level flight. Decided to approach high since I know the stall speed would be higher with the ice. Normal approach in this airplane is 70 MPH over the numbers. I crossed the numbers [around] 82 MPH.' The pilot stated that while on final approach for runway 23 the winds shifted from 230 degrees to 320 degrees '...with hard buffeting gusts over the hills to my right. As soon as the airplane went into ground effect it stopped flying - came down hard on the left main - I applied some power to regain control - the plane came down hard just off the runway in soft soil....' Subsequently, the airplane came to a stop after collided with a parked airplane and a hangar.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper recovery from a bounced landing, and his failure to maintain directional control, which resulted in a collision with a hangar and parked aircraft. Factors relating to the accident were: the pilot's encounter with rain, sleet, snow, and icing conditions, and airframe icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA027
- Event ID
- 20001208X07229
- Case number
- NYC97LA027
- 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: 351fa0df67e9fe6bf8b365962aa0fbfda015d316d8b53d2d859021472b68da96; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:39:17.344Z.