FTW98LA057 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From F54 · Arlington, TX to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA057
- 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 172M
- 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
- N80831
- Operator
- Fred Pate
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From F54 · Arlington, TXTo 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 · 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 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 pilot reported that during the landing flare, while practicing a soft field landing technique on runway 17, he encountered a wind gust from the right which offset the airplane to the left of the runway's centerline. He stated that he applied full power to abort the landing; however, the airplane continued to drift to the left and was headed towards the airport's windsock. While attempting to maneuver to avoid the windsock, the pilot lost control of the airplane, and the airplane nosed over coming to rest in an inverted position. In a written report, the pilot stated that 'he believed that full power was not achieved despite forward throttle position.' He added that 'he did not have sufficient time to close the carburetor heat' during his attempt to abort the landing. The pilot reported that the winds at the time of the accident were from 140 degrees at 10 gusting to 15 knots. The flight crew of a King Air that landed on the same runway, while the Cessna was on downwind, reported that they 'did not see or feel anything unusual during their approach, landing or roll out.'
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate compensation for wind conditions and failure to maintain directional control of the airplane, while landing. The gusty crosswind was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA057
- Event ID
- 20001208X09182
- Case number
- FTW98LA057
- 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: 191793e40362cf314d5584b97c998f789acb92f4a0def6d3ce85d043b7f0e709; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:10:55.855Z.