LAX98LA215 · Zimmerman KITFOX 4-1200 KITFOX 4-1
Zimmerman KITFOX 4-1200 KITFOX 4-1 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Falcon Field (FFZ) to Granville Airport (GFR)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA215
- 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
Zimmerman KITFOX 4-1200 KITFOX 4-1
- Aircraft type
- Zimmerman KITFOX 4
- 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
- N75MZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Falcon Field (FFZ), Mesa, AZTo Granville Airport (GFR)
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the windsock on the south end of the airport showed that the wind was coming from a direction of 200 degrees at a velocity of 8-10 mph. After touchdown, a right crosswind caused the aircraft to veer to the right. The pilot reported that he applied full left rudder, right aileron and up elevator, and added power. The aircraft continued to swerve to the right and was weather vaning. The right main tire left the ground and the tail wheel was skipping. As the aircraft departed the right side of the landing area, the right wing contacted a tree and the landing gear and left wing tip impacted a berm along the edge of the landing area. The aircraft flipped over inverted and continued to slide about 20 feet down to the bottom of the ravine on the edge of the runway. The pilot further reported that he had not experienced any mechanical malfunction with the aircraft prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain directional control during the landing roll in a crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA215
- Event ID
- 20001211X10368
- Case number
- LAX98LA215
- 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: e7c1bde9fb357cf741c6120b36b68c45d47ac3931935932b61566be425d03433; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:36:39.330Z.