CHI00LA309 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport (JVL) to Chicago Executive Airport (PWK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA309
- 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 172P
- 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
- N98629
- Operator
- American Flyers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport (JVL), Janesville, WITo Chicago Executive Airport (PWK)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 airplane nosed over following a loss of directional control on landing. The student pilot reported he received a weather briefing from the Kankakee Flight Service Station prior to the cross-country flight. The pilot reported that upon returning to the Palwaukee Airport (his original departure point), he was cleared to land on runway 16 with the winds from 250 degrees at 11 knots, gusting to 17 knots. Upon landing, the airplane traveled off the right side of the runway where it contacted a drainage ditch and nosed over. The student pilot's logbook was endorsed for the cross-country flight. The endorsement contained a 7 knots crosswind limitation. Palwaukee Airport has another runway which is oriented 24/06. According to a Cessna 172P Information Manual, the maximum demonstrated crosswind component for the airplane is 15 knots.
Probable cause
The student pilot's inadequate compensation for the crosswind that resulted in the failure to maintain directional control of the airplane. Factors associated with the accident were the crosswind, the ditch, the student's lack of experience, and the poor in-flight planning decision to land on a runway with a direct crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA309
- Event ID
- 20001212X21940
- Case number
- CHI00LA309
- 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: 58e27d3f3f2c1c00a58eb903c7a5b1f1fc8b4bc685eb6018bcdbce3e5aee2d4e; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:25:20.388Z.