LAX04CA157 · Cessna 172C
Cessna 172C · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From L64 · Desert Center, CA to Thermal, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04CA157
- 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 172C
- 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
- N8287X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L64 · Desert Center, CATo Thermal, 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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 › Airspeed, not obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Raising of flaps, not performed
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 settled into brush and hit terrain during a go-around. The pilot had successfully completed landings to his private dirt strip prior to the accident. On final approach with 20 degrees of flaps, he noted that the airplane was higher than normal. About 700 feet down the runway, the wheels touched down on the soft dirt. He aborted the landing instead of applying heavy brake pressure. Without retracting the flaps, he climbed to about 100 feet and made a turn to the left. The airplane began to lose altitude and he continued his turn to the left. After completing a 180-degree turn, he leveled out the airplane and lowered the nose, in an effort to regain airspeed. The sink rate continued, and the main landing gear encountered high brush. He thought that the high density altitude was the reason the airplane could not produce enough power to climb. He reported the temperature to be about 95 degrees Fahrenheit. The pilot did not report any mechanical problems with the airplane prior to the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to retract the flaps during the go-around and his failure to obtain and maintain sufficient airspeed, which led to a stall mush condition. High density altitude was a contributing factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04CA157
- Event ID
- 20040330X00396
- Case number
- LAX04CA157
- 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: c50bc9fae540695cad4025cc04471a5e7dacf53924ee692734543a1e70380c0a; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:16:48.778Z.