LAX05CA240 · Cessna 172N
West Air Aviation Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Mesquite Airport (67L) to North Las Vegas Airport (VGT)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05CA240
- 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 172N
- 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
- N4961D
- Operator
- West Air Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mesquite Airport (67L), Mesquite, NVTo North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), North Las Vegas, NV
- 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
After touching down on the runway, the airplane veered left off the runway, struck a ditch, crossed over a taxiway and collided with an airport location sign. The student pilot was returning from a round robin solo cross-country flight and configured the airplane for a full stop landing that included leveling off over the numbers and reducing the power to idle. The pilot said that the airplane stalled prior to the main landing gear touching down on the runway. After touchdown the airplane veered to the left and the pilot applied full right rudder and brake but the airplane did not respond and it exited the runway onto the gravel. The pilot said there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures.
Probable cause
the student pilot's failure to maintain directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05CA240
- Event ID
- 20051008X01603
- Case number
- LAX05CA240
- 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: 78464fe172b8bb60c24ea665a2d4a101d509b47a5777e8f2234ea43a7b6507d4; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:37:48.175Z.