LAX99LA258 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Sedona Airport (SEZ) to Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA258
- 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
- N5535D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sedona Airport (SEZ), Sedona, AZTo Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC)
- 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 · aborted
- 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 in flight
- 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, not obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Ground loop/swerve, uncontrolled
- Pilot in command › Raising of flaps, premature
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While landing in a crosswind, the aircraft was unexpectedly blown toward the right side of the runway. At the time, the airplane was in a left wing low, forward slip, with full flaps at a landing airspeed. The left main gear touched down first and the aircraft yawed left and ran off the side of the runway. The pilot said he had not been quick enough in applying rudder to maintain runway alignment and he decided to go around. He added power and raised the flaps but was unable to sufficiently maintain flying speed once the airplane lifted off the ground. He tried to accelerate in ground effect but the aircraft landed hard off the side of the runway and bounced. He felt he had lost control and abruptly closed the throttle and applied the brakes. The airplane then ground looped to a stop in the grass area off the side of the runway.
Probable cause
the student pilot's premature retraction of the flaps during an aborted landing and his failure to obtain/maintain adequate flying airspeed, which resulted in a stall/mush condition and the airplane settling back onto the ground. The student pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the subsequent ground roll was also causal.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA258
- Event ID
- 20001212X19307
- Case number
- LAX99LA258
- 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: 609a12aeced7631b1b355e2ff680f3cc0a8cee528bb96cfd700425ef5bbafc28; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:23:26.774Z.