LAX98LA028 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Scottsdale Airport (SDL) to E69
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA028
- 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
- N6585D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scottsdale Airport (SDL), Scottsdale, AZTo E69
- 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
- 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 › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he had turned final for runway 24 and noticed he was a little high and hot. He said he compensated for it by lowering the nose and adding 5 additional degrees of flaps. Although the airspeed remained constant at 80 knots, he realized quickly that he was still high and fast so he entered a slip to increase the rate of descent. The pilot stated that he felt he could extend his landing even if he touched down past midpoint and decided not to go-around. He estimated that he hit the ground at 58 to 60 knots when he encountered a strong crosswind from the left, which pushed him off the runway. The aircraft subsequently came to rest against several trees. The airport manager stated that he heard the airplane touch down and 'it sounded very fast' so he looked up and saw the airplane rolling down the runway at a very fast rate of speed. The aircraft then departed the runway and collided with trees. In his written statement, the pilot reported the winds at the airport as 110 degrees at 5 knots. The winds at the closest aviation weather reporting station were 160 degrees at 7 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's selection of a downwind direction to land and his failure to compensate for the quartering tailwind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA028
- Event ID
- 20001208X09198
- Case number
- LAX98LA028
- 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: 482ad11724b8dbf51166ef6c1cdd33b60eaa6dba21d33efd0c108d11189cb49d; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:13:41.648Z.