CHI98LA005 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From C48 to C48
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA005
- 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
- N73899
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From C48To C48
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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 › Airspeed(vso), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
In an interview, the pilot stated that he obtained weather information from a television broadcast prior to his planned local flight. The winds were reported out of the south at 30 knots with gusts. The pilot said that while taxiing to the north/south grass runway the winds were strong, and immediately after the southbound takeoff it became 'gusty.' He opted to stay in the traffic pattern and re-land. The pilot recalled that while on final the flaps were extended 'one notch,' and the indicated airspeed was 65 knots. After reducing the power to idle just prior to the flare, the pilot stated that the airplane encountered a wind shear. He said a gust pitched the airplane up, then the wind abruptly stopped, causing the airplane to pitch nose down and collide with the runway. The nose gear separated from the airframe and the airplane nosed over, coming to rest inverted. In an interview, the right seat passenger said that the approach seemed normal. The airplane leveled off over the runway, then floated for a little bit. He said the airplane then quickly nosed up then 'banged down.' He recalls the flaps extended 'one notch' prior to impact. Neither the pilot nor the passenger remembers hearing a stall warning.
Probable cause
the pilot's inability to maintain flying airspeed resulting in an inadvertent stall/mush. A factor contributing to this accident was the wind gust.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA005
- Event ID
- 20001208X08966
- Case number
- CHI98LA005
- 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: bd9810828653d9f59bf263ef323f07f52449758020302a2b3eb3be0a1584d3fe; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:25:08.096Z.