LAX00LA305 · Cessna 172
Glendale Aviation Cessna 172 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU) to Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA305
- 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 172
- 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
- N2078E
- Operator
- Glendale Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU), Glendale, AZTo Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG), AZ
- 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
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Go-around, improper
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 80-hour private pilot was on a personal cross-country flight in a Cessna 172N. He was landing at a 7,000 feet msl airport with a density altitude of 9,083 feet. During the landing touchdown, the airplane bounced and ballooned. The pilot added power to soften the landing, but the airplane ballooned further. At that point he decided to perform a go-around. He applied full power and started climbing. The stall warning was going off, so he reduced the angle of attack. He removed the first notch of flaps 'as directed by the balked landing procedure,' and the airplane started settling back down quickly. He put the flaps back down, but the descent was not stopped. About the same time, the airplane was hit by a wind gust from the right, pushing the plane left. He attempted to correct but was blown off the runway colliding with a runway length remaining sign and subsequently, a ditch. The wind was 220 degrees at 6 knots. The pilot reported he was number three to land and was on a long final with full flaps. He stated that there were no mechanical issues with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper go-around procedure and his failure to maintain directional control on landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA305
- Event ID
- 20001212X21777
- Case number
- LAX00LA305
- 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: 01d9d9b30b3b2ce23313fe478876f16bfcea31036ca4ef062d977ef0ed2f6236; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:34:04.474Z.