LAX99LA213 · Cessna 172
Hillside Aviation Cessna 172 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Q72 · Hayfork, CA to Benton Field (O85)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA213
- 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 172
- 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
- N5577E
- Operator
- Hillside Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Q72 · Hayfork, CATo Benton Field (O85), Redding, 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
- 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 terrain/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 › Go-around, improper
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that he obtained his license so that he could make routine trips of a 100 plus miles over mountainous terrain for business. He had made the roundtrip several times but had never landed at any of the four alternate airports along the route. On the day of the accident he decided to take a friend with him on this routine trip and checkout the airports on the way back. The first airport was closed so they overflew the runway at 500 agl. They landed at the second airport, then departed. At the third airport they performed a touch-and-go landing. The pilot informed his passenger that they would not be landing at the fourth airport, but instead they would perform a low-level flyby. During the pilot's training his flight instructor had informed him that the accident airport was a one-way runway due to obstructions at the north end. According to published information you land on runway 36 and take off on runway 18 due to rising terrain and unfavorable winds. During the low-level flyby of runway 36, about 15 to 20 feet agl, the pilot reported that he experienced a strong downdraft, and subsequently during the attempted go-around into rising terrain, the airplane collided with trees. The pilot reported that the wind was 300 degrees at 10 knots. The density altitude was calculated about 3,773 feet.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to follow prescribed procedures and directives for the particular airport.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA213
- Event ID
- 20001212X19028
- Case number
- LAX99LA213
- 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 1999-06-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e4938eb69c612e1c42a6856f6422393eace7ee9960c60bfda4210707484acabb; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:55:27.280Z.