FTW02LA171 · Cessna 172L
Cessna 172L · Accident: on ground/water encounter with weather during landing
From Liberal Mid-America Regional Airport (LBL) to Double Eagle II Airport (AEG)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02LA171
- 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 172L
- 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
- N4261Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Liberal Mid-America Regional Airport (LBL), Liberal, KSTo Double Eagle II Airport (AEG), Albuquerque, NM
- 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
- On ground/water encounter with weather
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot obtained a standard weather briefing which included VFR conditions for the intended route of flight. En route, he observed a developing squall line intersecting the intended route, and he made a decision to divert and land the airplane. Following the "normal touchdown" on the runway, an "extremely strong wind burst accompanied by rain pushed" the airplane onto grass off the left side of the runway. Subsequently, the airplane struck a ditch running perpendicular to the runway before coming to rest nosed over. At the approximate time of the accident, the wind was from 340 degrees at 14 knots with gusts to 30 knots, visibility 2 1/2 statue miles, with heavy thunderstorms and rain showers, and a wind shift with peak gust at 44 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control. Contributing factors were the shifting gusty winds and the ditch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02LA171
- Event ID
- 20020605X00809
- Case number
- FTW02LA171
- 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: dd1dd27133218df9bd7a4c806d675df99c1439429b13965a2d8f4fce2d30ddee; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:42:37.720Z.