LAX06CA281 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO) to Spanish Springs Airport (N86)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06CA281
- 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 172P
- 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
- N97306
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO), Santa Monica, CATo Spanish Springs Airport (N86), Spanish Springs, 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
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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 › Go-around, delayed
- Pilot in command › Proper climb rate, not attained
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 collided with a house during a go-around. The pilot was unfamiliar with the airport. Upon arrival, he flew around the airport at 5,600 feet mean sea level (msl); the airport elevation was 4,600 feet. UNICOM informed him that runway 16 was the preferred runway. He noted that the airport had a hill, which had silos on it, on the approach end of the runway. He maintained what he felt was a safe vertical separation from the silos, and came in a bit high as he set up for the landing. During his flare, he became aware that the runway sloped uphill. He was below the crest, and could not see how long the runway continued past it. He decided to go around, rather than rolling to the top and finding that the runway ended. Because of the runway slope, he felt that he could not level off and pickup speed. He pulled the nose up, and upon climbing above the crest, noticed houses at the end of the runway. He applied full power, and leaned the mixture for pattern altitude. The airplane started to climb, and he retracted the flaps up 1/2 notch; however, the airplane seemed to lose some lift. The terrain ahead sloped downhill to his left, so he banked slightly to the left. He maintained 60 knots, and noted that the stall warning horn did not sound. The airplane did not gain enough airspeed or altitude, and collided with the house. The Pilot Information Manual for the Model 172P states that during a go-around the flaps should be retracted to 20 degrees and the climb conducted at a speed of 55 knots. The density altitude was calculated to be 6,700 feet. The Airport/Facility Directory, Southwest U. S., indicated that that there was no line of sight between the ends of the runway. It stated that runway 16 had a 2.5 percent up gradient in the first 500 feet. The closest aviation weather reporting facility 14 nautical miles away was reporting winds from 060 degrees at 5 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to initiate a timely go-around and to attain an adequate climb rate. Factors in the accident were the high density altitude and the likely quartering tail wind that may have affected the aircraft's climb gradient.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06CA281
- Event ID
- 20061114X01657
- Case number
- LAX06CA281
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2006-09-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9571da71ed6ee544a8b66555a57a0395d2d68c6f5c43613cabf78736548cdcfe; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:28:49.794Z.