SEA07CA243 · Cessna 172S
Cessna 172S · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT) to Meadows Field (BFL)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07CA243
- 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 172S
- 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
- N3544Z
- Operator
- Shantee P. Sabree · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT), Fresno, CATo Meadows Field (BFL), Bakersfield, 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 · 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
In a telephone interview with the NTSB investigator-in-charge approximately 45 minutes after the accident, the student pilot reported that after landing on Runway 30R the airplane started to veer to the left. The student pilot stated that he was trying to correct back to the right "...but the right wing went up and the airplane went off the left side of the runway." The student pilot reported that the right main landing gear failed and the airplane came to rest in an upright position about 30 feet off the runway. The student pilot stated that there was damage to the right wing tip, the right horizontal stabilizer and the right elevator. The student pilot said, "I just lost control of the airplane." In an interview with the IIC, the airport manager revealed that the airplane had impacted a taxiway sign. At 0854, the on airport automated weather facility reported wind from 170 degrees at 4 knots, visibility 10 statute miles, sky clear, temperature 30 degrees C, dew point 12 degrees C, and an altimeter setting of 29.87 inches of Mercury.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the airplane during the landing roll, which resulted in a collision with a taxiway sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07CA243
- Event ID
- 20071012X01577
- Case number
- SEA07CA243
- 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: 4e97eb611086b8988a5dcded8a70c33123fa0adf1efb2deed18e31fe240b4361; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:29:00.233Z.