LAX07CA169 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From U77 · Spanish Fork, UT to St George Regional Airport (SGU)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07CA169
- 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
- N5285H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From U77 · Spanish Fork, UTTo St George Regional Airport (SGU), ST GEORGE, UT
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- 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 of runway 16 and ground looped during the landing roll in strong crosswind conditions. The pilot stated in a written report that he checked the AWOS as he approached the airport and noted a direct crosswind of higher velocity than made him comfortable. He continued to circle north of the airport until he observed the winds drop to 19 knots. He decided to enter the pattern for runway 16 and perform a go-around to, "feel the winds." After a successful go-around, he elected to come around the pattern again and attempt a landing. The pilot said, "I set a little crab on final the second time around and executed a very smooth descent, flare and landing. Between five hundred feet and one thousand feet after touchdown, the airplane started to turn right, and I couldn't apply enough left rudder to stop it." The airplane departed the runway and the propeller struck a taxiway light and the left wing tip made contact with the ground. The airplane came to rest 30 feet beyond the runway edge. At 1555, the airport's AWOS reported winds of 250 degrees at 21 knots, gusting to 27 knots. The Pilot's Operating Handbook for a 1976 Cessna 172M states that, "The maximum allowable crosswind velocity is dependent on pilot capability as well as aircraft limitations. With average pilot technique, direct crosswinds of 15 knots can be handled with safety." The pilot stated that the airplane and engine had no mechanical failures or malfunctions during the flight.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate compensation for a gusting crosswind and his failure to maintain directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07CA169
- Event ID
- 20070705X00885
- Case number
- LAX07CA169
- 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: d4417e7e6b2a8536293e030c2e696557dabfdc0526d71760abfa1c28e3832b20; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:49:38.864Z.