WPR11LA175 · Cessna 172N
Amehigh Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From U77 · Spanish Fork, UT to U77 · Spanish Fork, UT
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA175
- 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
- N739DG
- Operator
- Amehigh
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From U77 · Spanish Fork, UTTo U77 · Spanish Fork, 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 · flare/touchdown
- Defining eventThe 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 in flight
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot reported that, after he completed his preflight inspection, he delayed his departure because of reported high wind conditions at his planned destination airport located 5 nautical miles (nm) away. The nearest weather reporting facility was located at that airport, and the wind reported about 32 minutes before the accident was southwesterly at 16 knots, gusting to 26 knots. Shortly thereafter, the pilot noted that the wind was down the runway so he decided to depart for local takeoff-and-landing practice. During his first landing, the airplane bounced and the pilot said that he encountered a “microburst or intense wind.” The pilot lost control of the airplane and it departed the left side of the runway. The airplane cartwheeled several times and impacted an airport perimeter fence. About 28 minutes after the accident, the wind at the airport 5 nm away increased to 22 knots, gusting to 40 knots. Two witnesses reported a high, gusting wind at the accident airport and estimated it to be 40 to 50 knots from the southwest at the time of the accident. The pilot was landing to the southeast, and it is likely that the pilot encountered a gusting crosswind. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane.
Probable cause
The student pilot's inadequate compensation for the gusting wind, which resulted in a loss of airplane control during landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to depart with a high gusting wind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA175
- Event ID
- 20110321X93124
- Case number
- WPR11LA175
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 2645c86b6cc821c4a1b7e843b11c2866981c08ab4936e3444a0a15f5fcf996dc; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:56:54.000Z.