LAX05LA084 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: nose over during landing
From Brackett Field (POC) to Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA084
- 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 172M
- 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
- N472RA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brackett Field (POC), La Verne, CATo Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC), Prescott, AZ
- 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
- Nose over
- 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(cfi) › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
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 an attempted landing on a dry lake bed. During a cross-country instructional flight, the instructor attempted to demonstrate an off airport, soft field landing on a dry lakebed. The instructor had not previously planned to land on the dry lakebed and had no information as to the condition of the landing surface. The landing surface was softer than the instructor anticipated. During the touchdown, the main landing gear sank into the sand, and the airplane nosed over. The instructor stated that the airplane and engine had no mechanical failures or malfunctions during the flight.
Probable cause
The instructor's improper decision to land on the dry lakebed without knowing the condition of the landing surface. A factor in the accident was the soft sand surface of the lake bed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA084
- Event ID
- 20050503X00544
- Case number
- LAX05LA084
- 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: 6d96d2912f33827b2411877d2b574ce538b41de2b3d7bb585d00e2beeddad510; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:18:31.994Z.