LAX99LA252 · Cessna 172K
Cessna 172K · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Bakersfield International Airport (L45) to L17
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA252
- 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 172K
- 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
- N46451
- Operator
- Andy Griffith
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bakersfield International Airport (L45), Bakersfield, CATo L17
- 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
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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
- Distance/speed › Inadequate
- Pilot in command › Aborted landing, initiated
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not attained
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Distance/speed, misjudged
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was going to practice landings. He planned to land on runway 25 and depart on runway 07 due to terrain and runway slope considerations. He said the winds were from 050 degrees at 10 to 12 knots. He made a go-around on his first attempted landing, then made a full stop landing on runway 25 and took off on runway 7. On his third attempt, he landed on runway 25 with full flaps and the airplane began drifting to the right as it slowed down. As he was correcting, he felt the nose wheel 'skid/shimmy.' He was approximately halfway down the runway at 35 knots, when the airplane departed the right side of the runway and he decided to abort the landing. He re-entered the runway with approximately 150 yards of pavement remaining and rotated at approximately 50 knots with 30 yards of asphalt remaining. During the takeoff initial climb, the airplane collided with trees and a power lines. Examination of the runway determined the airplane veered about 80 feet off the runway into a dirt area, and that the airplane lifted off about 270 yards from the airport boundary fence. The first set of power lines was less than 0.25-mile from the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot's selection of the wrong runway in consideration of the wind conditions and his subsequent failure to maintain directional control. The pilot's decision to abort the landing attempt with inadequate runway remaining for the takeoff phase was also causal.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA252
- Event ID
- 20001212X19302
- Case number
- LAX99LA252
- 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 1999-07-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e1cb99ddaaa3ab4cb6669c2de6ced919ce64c99fd12d683a962c6b74280a676e; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:28:12.920Z.