LAX94LA061 · Cessna 172P
Squadron Two Flying Club Cessna 172P · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94LA061
- 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 172P
- 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
- N65922
- Operator
- Squadron Two Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC), San Jose, CATo 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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 › Airspeed(vref), excessive
- Pilot in command › Go-around, delayed
- Pilot in command › Proper glidepath, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was high and fast during the approach to the ranch airstrip. He said the aircraft was still 100 feet above the ground and about halfway down the 2,700 foot long dirt airstrip when he initiated a go-around toward the hills immediately off the departure end of the runway. The pilot stated that the aircraft encountered a down draft and was only climbing at about 200 feet per minute. The aircraft could not outclimb the rising terrain and the pilot said he intentionally stalled the aircraft into the trees about one-half mile beyond the airstrip.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper approach speed and glide path, and his delayed initiation of a go-around. A factor in the accident was the wind shear condition created by the hills immediately off the departure end of the dirt airstrip.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94LA061
- Event ID
- 20001211X13767
- Case number
- LAX94LA061
- 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 1993-11-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 079e5727e02c3534895bcac10251a8a0ec651de7bb2a8a3a03d075315d76e305; retrieved 2026-09-21T22:45:05.486Z.