LAX01LA021 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: overrun on approach
From Half Moon Bay Airport (HAF) to Half Moon Bay Airport (HAF)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA021
- 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
- N5226K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Half Moon Bay Airport (HAF), Half Moon Bay, CATo Half Moon Bay Airport (HAF), Half Moon Bay, CA
- 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
- Overrun
- 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 › Climb, not possible
- Weather condition › Windshear
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane collided with a fence during a forced landing. The pilot reported that as he initiated his approach to runway 30 he noticed strong gusty winds and low-level shear conditions. To compensate, he increased his approach airspeed and left the flaps in their retracted position. While continuing over the approach end of the runway, he encountered an area with a high sink rate. He immediately added full power to stop his descent. With full power, and with the airplane's nose about 5 degrees above the horizon, the airplane began to climb slowly. At this point, the pilot encountered a strong, gusting, right quartering headwind that lifted the right wing and resulted in a loss of altitude. In response, as the airplane touched down beyond the departure end of the runway, he closed the throttle. The airplane rolled through a fence before coming to a stop. Winds at the closest weather reporting station San Francisco International Airport (SFO), were 360 at 18 knots gusting to 22 knots.
Probable cause
A local windshear condition that exceeded the airplane's climb performance capability during landing approach and resulted in the runway overrun during an attempted go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA021
- Event ID
- 20001212X22197
- Case number
- LAX01LA021
- 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, coordinates. 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: 9607b1125d37bf3d143f0c143d7845ba5cef9f6900c5eb452912a939ab1c0e9c; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:03:19.775Z.