LAX96LA241 · Cessna 182
Cessna 182 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) while maneuvering
From Q84 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA241
- 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 182
- 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
- N3675U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Q84To not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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 › Distance/speed, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Engine shutdown, intentional
- Pilot in command › Wind information, not verified
- Pilot in command › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot carried four parachute jumpers aloft; one left the aircraft at 4,500 feet and the last three left at 12,000 feet. After all the jumpers had exited, the pilot decided to do a power off stall. He stated that he was 'curious about the gliding abilities of the 182' and pulled the mixture control to idle cutoff when the aircraft was over the airport at 11,500 feet. During the stall maneuver the propeller stopped rotating. The pilot glided down in an orbit over the airport to 5,000 feet before trying to start the engine. All subsequent engine restart efforts during the descent were unsuccessful and he decided to land on runway 32 because the winds were from 330 degrees when he departed. The pilot said that once on final approach he saw that he was high and fast, then noticed that the windsock indicated a tailwind. The pilot attempted to use flaps and a prolonged slip; however, the aircraft floated down the entire length of the 3,550-foot-long runway. The aircraft finally touched down on the nose gear 280 feet beyond the runway's departure end. The nose gear collapsed and the aircraft nosed over. An FAA airworthiness inspector examined the aircraft and reported finding evidence of fuel leakage past the filler caps as the aircraft lay upside down in the field. No discrepancies were found in the engine, the induction system, or engine compartment fuel lines/filters. With the exception of the bladder fuel tanks, no discrepancies or contaminants were found in the airframe fuel system. Detailed examination of the fuel bladder tanks revealed that portions of the cells were loose and not secured to the internal wing structure. Folds were noted on the bottom of the cells with evidence of trapped fuel in the folds and wrinkles.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to intentionally shut down the engine; his failure to verify the surface winds during the prolonged orbiting descent over the airport, which resulted in a final approach with a tailwind component; and his misjudging of the aircraft's altitude and speed during the power off forced landing attempt, which led to a runway overrun.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA241
- Event ID
- 20001208X06041
- Case number
- LAX96LA241
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-06-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d11b00eaf40e7853e9b208e3079348f355a0fb4fd79f0214824ab3b643eab671; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:10:17.596Z.