CHI02LA078 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From SKY · Sandusky, OH to Dowagiac Municipal Airport (C91)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA078
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- N66986
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From SKY · Sandusky, OHTo Dowagiac Municipal Airport (C91), Dowagiac, MI
- 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
During landing rollout the airplane departed the right side of the prepared runway surface, entered a soft agricultural field, and nosed over. The landing attempt was made on runway 27 and the winds at the time were reported to be 180 degrees magnetic at 14 knots with gusts to 20 knots. The pilot reported he should have diverted, "to an airport that had a runway that was better [aligned] with the wind." The Cessna 172P Information Manual addresses crosswind landings and states in part, "The maximum allowable crosswind velocity is dependent upon pilot capability as well as aircraft limitations. Operation in direct crosswinds of 15 knots has been demonstrated."
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the wind conditions that resulted in directional control not being maintained during the landing roll. Factors to the accident were the pilot's inadequate in-flight decision to attempt the landing with a gusting 20 knot direct crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA078
- Event ID
- 20020221X00244
- Case number
- CHI02LA078
- 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: 7db49e3046da310af8e2c476d1f4f9ec12a4c47283ffac9f39eb6aab9a8b88c3; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:46:36.777Z.