ATL99LA063 · Cessna 185
Cessna 185 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Cary, NC (no airport) to HDX
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL99LA063
- 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
- 0
- 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 185
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N185MN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cary, NC (no airport)To HDX
- 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
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, the airplane touched down in the center of the runway on the main landing gear. As the tail wheel started down the pilot experienced wind gusts which raised the right wing and instantly rotated the airplane 35 degrees to the right. The airplane veered off the right side of the runway and collided with a concrete culvert. The airplane came to a stop and there was substantial damage done to the left wing and left main landing gear. No mechanical problems with the airplane were reported by the pilot. A review of existing weather data disclosed that surface winds were approximately 180 degrees at 14 knots with gusts to 24 knots
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate evaluation of weather information that resulted in his failure to maintain directional control during landing. Factors were gusting winds, and a tail wind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL99LA063
- Event ID
- 20001205X00267
- Case number
- ATL99LA063
- 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. 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: 1ecf22179b58d3350275c02270fa206d2bf5ee456fe90843b07209962602ddb8; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:34:58.306Z.