SEA97LA060 · Cessna 172N
Utah Valley Aviation Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Provo Municipal Airport (PVU) to Delta Municipal Airport (DTA)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA060
- 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
- N5552E
- Operator
- Utah Valley Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Provo Municipal Airport (PVU), Provo, UTTo Delta Municipal Airport (DTA)
- 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 · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot stated that he overflew the airport, observed the wind sock, and listened to the airport's recorded weather information immediately prior to landing. The wind sock and weather recording indicated calm winds. Upon touchdown onto the runway, the airplane encountered a sudden, gusty, quartering tail wind. The airplane then veered off the east side of the runway and into a mound of dirt, despite the pilot's attempts to maintain directional control. The nose gear was sheered off and the airplane flipped over, damaging both wing struts. The pilot stated that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to adequately compensate for the prevailing wind conditions, and his subsequent failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll. Factors contributing to the accident are a sudden shift in the prevailing wind at the time of the landing, and the presence of a mound of dirt near the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA060
- Event ID
- 20001208X07459
- Case number
- SEA97LA060
- 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: 44e8cc0fe2f94d701089479e9261a1a83abb5be4aeea4648658dcf265b33c169; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:18:52.707Z.