LAX00LA053 · Cessna 172A
Cessna 172A · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Mojave Air & Space Port (MHV) to Shoshone Airport (L61)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA053
- 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 172A
- 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
- N34261
- Operator
- Charles R. Christman · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mojave Air & Space Port (MHV), MOHAVE, CATo Shoshone Airport (L61)
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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 stated he overflew the runway to try and determine the wind direction and speed before he attempted to land. He said that the windsock was in tatters and he was unable to determine the wind volume, but that it was right down the runway. He set up for a short field landing using 40 degrees of flaps. The pilot said that as he flared for landing a microburst lifted the right wing and he was unable to regain directional control of the airplane before it exited the runway and struck a bush. A local police officer that interviewed the pilot said that the pilot told him that he asked his passenger to raise the flaps while he powered up the engine while they were in the air, trying to regain control of the airplane. The officer said that when he arrived shortly after the accident, the 'wind was very strong and the windsock was horizontal to the ground.'
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the existing strong and gusting wind conditions and his subsequent failure to maintain directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA053
- Event ID
- 20001212X20264
- Case number
- LAX00LA053
- 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: f8613143a23ed95fd3cc815415a565dbc3d3f725e1a61691fae8a436708a6664; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:31:51.523Z.