CHI99LA288 · Cessna 172G
Cessna 172G · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From 0H0 to 0H0
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA288
- 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 172G
- 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
- N4425L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 0H0To 0H0
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- 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 › Wind information, not understood
- Pilot in command › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he listened to the Springfield ATIS (automated terminal information service) broadcast before takeoff and set the altimeter. He said he heard the wind was 290 degrees at 17 knots. He said for some reason he taxied to the west end of the strip and did his run up. The pilot said that on takeoff he started to lift off at 55 to 60 indicated. He said on climb out the airplane drifted right and struck corn. He said the right wing's contact with the corn pulled the airplane further into the corn and the airplane came to rest on its top. The pilot said he should have been taking off to the west.
Probable cause
the pilot's selection of the wrong runway for the prevailing winds. Factors were the pilot's misunderstanding of the wind information and the tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA288
- Event ID
- 20001212X19441
- Case number
- CHI99LA288
- 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: 08323c86d0a973e71f2350cdbb7b4d840369bac8fa89ac5be5b655a02c4210ff; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:18:36.751Z.