CHI97LA100 · Cessna 172K
Cessna 172K · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Heber Springs Municipal Airport/Charlie Evans Field (HBZ) to Johnson County Executive Airport (OJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA100
- 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 172K
- 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
- N46311
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Heber Springs Municipal Airport/Charlie Evans Field (HBZ), Heber Springs, ARTo Johnson County Executive Airport (OJC)
- 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 › Crosswind component, exceeded
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the landing approach the pilot told ATC that the surface winds were '...near [the] recommended maximum for my plane... .' He said he told the controller he could divert to an airport which he specified. The pilot said the controller told him the winds at the airport he specified were worse. The pilot continued the landing. According to the pilot, the airplane was '...immediately pushed [to] the right by [a] gust... .' The airplane crossed runway 36 onto loping terrain where the airplane nosed over.' The winds were from 290 degrees at 19 knots gusting to 31 knots. An airport about 13 miles west of the accident airport had an East-West runway. The pilot said he didn't use that airport because he thought the same wind conditions existed there as the airport he had asked the controller about. The crosswind component for the airplane is 15 miles per hour (mph). The existing crosswind component during the landing was 18 knots (22 mph).
Probable cause
the pilot's improper inflight planning/decision and exceeding the airplane recommended crosswind component. Factors associated with this accident were the weather conditions of a high wind, gusts, and a crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA100
- Event ID
- 20001208X07680
- Case number
- CHI97LA100
- 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: d53a4cd1e3bda9cbaf2f82b6bda7a11b9e14ce986d7b0a3d78918ea3cf5bf0eb; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:28:24.100Z.