LAX97LA166 · Cessna 172N
Sunbird Flight Services Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Mucugê Airport (CHD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA166
- 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
- N733PM
- Operator
- Sunbird Flight Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mucugê Airport (CHD)To 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
- 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
- Aircraft performance, crosswind capability › Exceeded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he lost directional control of the aircraft on the landing roll due to a wind gust. The right wing impacted runway lights and both wings struck the runway surface. The aircraft eventually departed the runway into soft dirt, causing the nose gear to collapse. A special weather observation taken just after the accident, reported that the surface winds were from 260 degrees at 15 knots with gusts to 25 knots. Immediately before the accident, the winds were reported as being from 280 degrees at 18 knots with gusts to 25 knots. According to the manufacturer's demonstrated crosswind component information, at the time the accident occurred, the wind exceeded the aircraft's demonstrated crosswind capability by as much as 7 knots, or 46 percent.
Probable cause
the pilot's encounter with crosswind gusts beyond the performance capability of the aircraft. A lack of crosswind limit information published in the Cessna 172N Pilot's Operating Handbook for landing and taxiing operations is a factor in the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA166
- Event ID
- 20001208X07760
- Case number
- LAX97LA166
- 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: 91d173e8d269acfe0634a94bfd2e4c977c584971705bc94b5ea5ddf82b94e389; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:54:04.406Z.