LAX99LA321 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid during landing
From Palo Alto Airport (PAO) to VCB
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA321
- 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
- N738ZQ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, CATo VCB
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot overflew the airport to check the windsock and noted that the winds appeared to be coming straight down the runway. As he initiated the landing flare, he noted that the windsock indicated that the winds had shifted direction and were now about 90 degrees to his left. He attempted to go around, but the airplane turned left into the wind and began to stall. The airplane impacted the ground and bounced. While still in a stalled configuration, the airplane veered left off the runway. The pilot held the nose of the airplane down while accelerating in ground effect, then initiated a climb. He decided to return to his departure airport instead of attempting another landing. After landing at the departure airport, he noted damage to the wingtip, aileron, and secondary spar. He stated that he had not experienced any mechanical problems with the airplane prior to the accident. The recorded weather data from the airport weather observation facility reflected that the winds were from 350 degrees at 12 knots, gusting to 18 knots, at the time of the accident. The pilot had received a DUATS weather briefing the morning of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the existing gusty crosswind condition and his subsequent failure to maintain directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA321
- Event ID
- 20001212X19816
- Case number
- LAX99LA321
- 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: f2c2aa37cbb2bf62a6e675b8044394389c3829a463c2b3ceae7e546abfb4781f; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:00:00.322Z.