WPR14LA080 · Cessna 172N
Vista Aviation Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Whiteman Airport (WHP) to Whiteman Airport (WHP)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA080
- 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
- N4936D
- Operator
- Vista Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whiteman Airport (WHP), Pacoima, CATo Whiteman Airport (WHP), Pacoima, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 34 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot and the flight instructor were conducting a local instructional flight. The pilot reported that, due to high wind, the flight instructor took the controls during the landing. He added that, as the airplane touched down, it encountered a wind gust and then became airborne. The flight instructor applied power in an attempt to crab into the wind and avoid colliding with the air traffic control tower. The airplane then encountered another wind gust, ascended to about 50 ft, continued to drift left of the runway, and then rolled. The flight instructor was unable to maintain control, and the airplane subsequently descended and collided with power transmission lines, impacted a building, and came to rest in a nearby parking lot. The reported wind at the airport about the time of the accident was a 22-knot crosswind gusting up to 26 knots. The pilots reported no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s inadequate compensation for the gusting crosswind conditions during landing, which resulted in a loss of airplane control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA080
- Event ID
- 20131229X75757
- Case number
- WPR14LA080
- 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. 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: fd230943e02e972d8af31af332d4c43a8dcc6bab8577a04f3bb4a45fb9cb6531; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:12:57.374Z.