LAX05CA111 · Cessna 172A
West Valley Flying Club Cessna 172A · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From San Carlos Airport (KSQL) to Blue Canyon Nyack Airport (BLU)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05CA111
- 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 172A
- 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
- N4682G
- Operator
- West Valley Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Carlos Airport (KSQL), San Carlos, CATo Blue Canyon Nyack Airport (BLU), Emigrant Gap, 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
- 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 collision with terrain/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 › Preflight planning/preparation, 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 nosed over during a touch-and-go landing on a snow covered runway. The vertical stabilizer and rudder were bent when the airplane came to rest inverted. Upon arrival in the airport vicinity, the pilot flew over the airport three times. He noted that one end of the runway was visible and that the remaining 3/4 of the runway was covered in snow. Visually, the snow did not appear to be of any great depth. Based on the reported winds, the pilot decided to perform a touch-and-go on the snow-covered portion of the runway. As the airplane touched down, the landing gear entered the snow and the airplane nosed-over. The pilot noted no preimpact mechanical anomalies with the airplane. The Airport Facility Directory Southwest (AFD/SW) contains the following entry, in part, for the accident airport: "CLOSED winters due to snow." The pilot reported that he reviewed the AFD/SW, but did not read the "Remarks" section.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate preflight planning and his selection of an unsuitable landing area, resulting in an encounter with a snow-covered runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05CA111
- Event ID
- 20050405X00416
- Case number
- LAX05CA111
- 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: 4efdf1bdead9db65534430b91cdb5a006208b224afb23030f077380c78443c70; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:12:32.555Z.