LAX93LA284 · Cessna 172N
Executive Flyers Cessna 172N · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during takeoff
From O00 to Sacramento Executive Airport (SAC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX93LA284
- 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
- N75901
- Operator
- Executive Flyers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From O00To Sacramento Executive Airport (SAC), Sacramento, CA
- 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 · roll/run
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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 › Abort, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he was departing the Alturus municipal airport, which has an elevation of 4,375 feet MSL. The official weather observation for the airport reported a temperature of 83 degrees 20 minutes after the accident, for a computed density altitude of 7,100 feet. The pilot noted that the engine ran smoothly during the takeoff ground roll, but did not seem to reach full RPM. He said that at about 50 knots he rotated the nose of the aircraft and it climbed about 10 feet, then settled back onto the pavement. The pilot noted that he attempted several times to lift off the runway, but the aircraft would not climb off of the pavement. The pilot stated that he then aborted the takeoff, over ran the departure end of the runway and collided with a ditch and a fence. The flight manual for the aircraft states that the mixture should be leaned for takeoff at fields with elevations above 3,000 feet. The rotation speed specified in the flight manual for a normal takeoff is 55 knots.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S DELAY IN ABORTING THE TAKEOFF. THE PILOT'S PREMATURE ROTATION AND HIS FAILURE TO FOLLOW THE PROCEDURES IN THE AIRPLANE FLIGHT MANUAL REGARDING USE OF THE MIXTURE CONTROL, THE HIGH DENSITY ALTITUDE CONDITION AND THE PILOT'S LACK OF TOTAL FLIGHT EXPEREINCE WERE FACTORS IN THE ACCIDENT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX93LA284
- Event ID
- 20001211X12947
- Case number
- LAX93LA284
- 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: ed1e5c83ff2cc213a0759bc698f9b633fdf44b09f0ba1eb860c034ad1d018419; retrieved 2026-09-23T01:53:05.529Z.