LAX00LA252 · Cessna 152
Sierra Academy of Aeronautics Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA252
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N6439M
- Operator
- Sierra Academy of Aeronautics
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK)To 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Dual student › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Dual student › Directional control, not maintained
- Dual student › Instructions, written/verbal, not complied with
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Oakland, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Touch-and-go landings were being practiced, and the winds were variable. After power was added and the airplane was accelerating, the instructor noticed the student was not compensating for torque or crosswind. The instructor prompted the student to add right rudder, but the student reacted quickly with left rudder and brake. The instructor pulled power but did not want to make aggressive control inputs due to the airplane's speed. The airplane veered left, departed the runway, hit a runway light, and the nose gear collapsed.
Probable cause
failure of the instructor to adequately supervise the student, resulting in a loss of directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA252
- Event ID
- 20001212X21499
- Case number
- LAX00LA252
- 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: 621f640aacacc7e22958249acf1f3f15cb0d0389a4e82df420dd71e55bd22fdd; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:43:50.691Z.