LAX96LA307 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From 3AZ2 to CZG
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA307
- 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 A185F
- 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
- N2431Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3AZ2To CZG
- 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 › Ground loop/swerve, inadvertent
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Casa Grande, AZ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot lost directional control and inadvertently ground looped the airplane after practicing touch-and-go landings and takeoffs. The student received dual instruction in the airplane about 2 months before the accident, but he did not receive the appropriate endorsement to solo the accident airplane. Postaccident examination disclosed no evidence of any preexisting malfunction or failure. The student pilot reported that the surface winds were slightly breezy.
Probable cause
the student pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the airplane, which resulted in an inadvertent ground loop. Factors relating to the accident were: the student pilot's inadequate training and lack of certification (endorsement).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA307
- Event ID
- 20001208X06554
- Case number
- LAX96LA307
- 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: 09831e1cf3427ab22b5e28dc3f3e931fcaf9e125d845f4de71068df279522c73; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:36:31.363Z.