LAX99LA313 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Modesto City Co-Harry Sham Field (MOD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA313
- 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
- N2339E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Modesto City Co-Harry Sham Field (MOD), Modesto, 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
- 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, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Raising of flaps, premature
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was to do a touch-and-go at the accident airport and return to home base. No discrepancies were noted with the flight while en route to the accident airport. On final approach the pilot noted that the windsock was indicating a crosswind, and approximately 30 feet agl he felt a strong left-quartering headwind. After he corrected for the crosswind, a gust of wind pushed the left wing up and the airplane veered off of the runway. He attempted to land, and when he saw that he would not be able to land on the runway, he applied full throttle and pushed the carburetor heat in to attempt a go-around. The pilot felt the airplane about to stall and he retracted all of the flaps. He stated that there was not enough lift and the airplane impacted the ground from about 50 feet agl. No mechanical malfunctions were noted with the airplane or engine. The airport manager said that the winds at the time of the accident were from the northwest at 5 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's premature retraction of the flaps during an attempted go-around with insufficient airspeed, which led to an inadvertent stall/mush condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA313
- Event ID
- 20001212X19812
- Case number
- LAX99LA313
- 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: 7154553f122e35227dfa74828efbfd9b9013ddb3d22abee39f69239b5cae34cc; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:07:42.718Z.