LAX04LA199 · Cessna 195
Cessna 195 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL) to Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04LA199
- 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 195
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 195
- 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
- N195AF
- Operator
- Frederick W. Murdock III · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL), Riverside, CATo Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL), Riverside, 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
- 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 › Directional 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 airplane veered off the runway and impacted a ditch during the landing roll. The pilot had completed 10 three-point practice touch-and-go takeoff and landings without mishap, and was attempting his last landing of the day. During the landing roll, the airplane drifted off the centerline to the right. The pilot attempted to counteract the drift by applying left rudder pressure. The airplane continued to veer in a right arc off the side of the runway and encountered a ditch. The airplane impacted terrain, pushing the engine into the firewall and forcing the cockpit floor upward. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions with the airplane prior to impact. Later, the pilot stated that the factors that he thought contributed to the accident were a quartering right tailwind, lack of left tail wheel steering, impeded rudder control, pilot error/lack of experience for not attempting to steer via the use of differential braking, and the presence of a ditch in close proximity to the runway. He reported that there was a 4-knot right quartering tailwind from 070 degrees. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector examined the airplane and found no evidence of a malfunction or failure with the brake, control, or ground steering systems. The accident flight was the pilot's first solo flight in the make and model, although he had previously accumulated about 140 hours in the same make and model.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain directional control, resulting in a veer off the runway and collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04LA199
- Event ID
- 20040723X01047
- Case number
- LAX04LA199
- 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: df8cd6193957984d265457f1a6236845811ddb09467acfd9807c766fc91d3ece; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:37:41.857Z.