LAX96LA136 · Cessna 182Q
Vista Aviation Cessna 182Q · Accident: hard landing
From Whiteman Airport (WHP) to Catalina Airport (AVX)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA136
- 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 182Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N7583S
- Operator
- Vista Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whiteman Airport (WHP), PACOIMA, CATo Catalina Airport (AVX)
- 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
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Flare, improper
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that this was his first flight to Catalina Island and that he was unfamiliar with the airport. The wind was from 170 degrees at 8 knots, and the pilot elected to land on runway 22. There were steep cliffs on both the approach and departure ends of the runway. The first 2,000 feet of the 3,240-foot-long runway had a pronounced upslope gradient. The pilot said he made three attempts to land, but the aircraft was high and fast each time due to the an optical illusion that was presented by the upsloping terrain at the approach end of the runway. On the third approach, the aircraft touched down hard and bounced back into the air. The pilot said he then released back pressure on the control yoke and the aircraft hit hard on the nose wheel, damaging the propeller and firewall.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper flare and improper recovery from a bounced landing. Factors relating to the accident were: a visual illusion due to rising terrain at the approach end of the runway, and the pilot's misjudgment of distance and speed during the approach to land.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA136
- Event ID
- 20001208X05429
- Case number
- LAX96LA136
- 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: 32265558b61f30cf94aa298a72da5215434a44fa97e49362ae3fc762b87313d2; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:45:27.182Z.