LAX98LA287 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA287
- 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 170B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 170
- 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
- N8245A
- Operator
- Frank Mason
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)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
- Takeoff
- 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, improper
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had been in the landing pattern with an instructor for approximately an hour. After his passenger arrived and took the instructor's place, he went out to practice a few more landings. He took off and made a normal 3-point landing. He retracted flaps, added full power, pushed forward on the yoke, and brought the tail up. Initially the airplane tracked straight down the runway, then began to drift and required him to apply left aileron and right rudder. As he adjusted to slightly realign the aircraft with the runway, it veered sharply and went into a grassy area off the runway and nosed over.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the existing crosswind condition and failure to maintain directional control
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA287
- Event ID
- 20001211X11097
- Case number
- LAX98LA287
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-09-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8da2e92771ff213aef340dc09e9c1702a657628b7bd17ee0c5f0f2013d556794; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:50:30.208Z.