IAD97LA042 · Cessna 310F
Cessna 310F · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Bishop International Airport (FNT) to Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97LA042
- 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 310F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N1761G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bishop International Airport (FNT), Flint, MITo Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Bridgeport, CT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
On a night cross-country flight, the pilot accepted a visual approach to his destination. He requested information for the active runway, but was told the tower was closed. The controller stated that the last reported wind was, '0154 Zulu, two eight zero at one two gusts at one seven.' The pilot reported that he misunderstood the controller and thought the 'wind was 010 degrees at 29 knots.' The pilot landed on runway 6, and stated that 'shortly after touch down, a strong quarterly tailwind pushed the aircraft off (the right side) of the runway.' Before stopping, the airplane struck the VASI at the approach end of runway 24. The wind was recorded as 290 degrees at 21 knots with gusts to 28 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate compensation for wind conditions, and his failure to maintain directional control of the airplane during the landing roll. Related factors were: the pilot's misunderstanding of the wind conditions, and the resultant quartering tail wind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97LA042
- Event ID
- 20001208X07306
- Case number
- IAD97LA042
- 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 1997-01-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f15c6113851d6f30255cad5330e7c595de05f0a0eb57e187a0dba2bccb3ee115; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:28:56.182Z.