CEN14CA496 · Cessna 172M M
Cessna 172M M · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From John H Batten Airport (RAC) to John H Batten Airport (RAC)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14CA496
- 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 M
- 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
- N3510Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From John H Batten Airport (RAC), Racine, WITo John H Batten Airport (RAC), Oxford, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1973)
- 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
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported he was landing on runway 36 when the accident occurred. He listened to the automated weather reporting station from an airport 13 miles away and the wind was reported as being from 350 degrees at 5 knots. He stated he established a crab angle to compensate for the wind while on final approach. Upon reaching an altitude of 50 feet above the ground, he noticed a decrease in the crosswind and an increased sink rate. The airplane traveled to the left side of the airstrip where it contacted high brush. The airplane yawed further to the left where it contacted trees resulting in substantial damage to the wings and fuselage.
Probable cause
The pilot did not compensate for the decrease in the crosswind when he descended below the tree line during the landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14CA496
- Event ID
- 20140914X03841
- Case number
- CEN14CA496
- 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: 1f3123e789a04a428b22c79dff7686968cadfb99b31975dc427384e9d74011e8; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:45:18.720Z.