CHI04LA004 · Cessna 140
Cessna 140 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From East Kansas City Airport (3GV) to Waterloo Regional Airport (ALO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA004
- 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 140
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N72701
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From East Kansas City Airport (3GV), Grain Valley, MOTo Waterloo Regional Airport (ALO), Waterloo, IA
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
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 cart wheeled following a loss of control while landing on runway 30. The pilot reported he contacted Flight Service and heard transmissions from other aircraft so he knew the winds were strong and gusty out of the northwest. He also listened to automated terminal information service (ATIS) prior to landing. The pilot stated he was at 60 miles per hour and as the left wheel touched down, the right wing began to rise. He applied full power and removed the carburetor heat to go-around. The pilot stated the right wing continued to rise and he was unable to lower it or the nose in order to gain more airspeed. He stated the left wing contacted the runway followed by the propeller, main gear, and right wing tip. The pilot stated he believed the left wing was in a "stall mode." The local winds recorded one minute prior to the accident were from 330 degrees at 20 knots gusting to 27 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the wind conditions which resulted in his failure to maintain control of the airplane while landing. A factor associated with the accident was the strong, gusty wind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA004
- Event ID
- 20031009X01697
- Case number
- CHI04LA004
- 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: c4a1212ae1dabda7860f5280b8b43b417a2942768005fece1993b1a48dbd68c3; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:21:04.961Z.