SEA97LA087 · Cessna A185E
Cessna A185E · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Miles City Airport - Frank Wiley Field (MLS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA087
- 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 A185E
- 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
- N70194
- Operator
- Alvin Hirsch
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miles City Airport - Frank Wiley Field (MLS), Miles City, MTTo 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
- 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
- Compensation for wind conditions › Inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot, who was acting as pilot-in-command, reported that during the approach for landing, the aircraft encountered turbulence and wind shear conditions. The pilot opted to go-around and asked the flight instructor to take over the controls to make the landing because the flight instructor had more time in the airplane. The flight instructor stated that he made an approach to another runway, and reported a normal approach for the cross wind conditions. The flight instructor reported that as the airplane was flaring, the right wing lifted and the left wing contacted the runway. The flight instructor tried to correct with power and right rudder and aileron control, however, the airplane veered to the left and tipped up onto its nose. At the time of the accident the airplane was landing with a quartering crosswind from the right at 16 knots. Air traffic communications indicate that neither the pilots in the accident airplane, or the other private and commercial aircraft taking off and landing reported turbulence or wind shear conditions to the controller.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's inadequate compensation for the wind conditions. The crosswind conditions were a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA087
- Event ID
- 20001208X07827
- Case number
- SEA97LA087
- 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: 96228ed658097345dc2bcecc8f50730897e99a4eae673f09841b5193d29cb452; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:56:28.090Z.