LAX97LA203 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA203
- 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 180
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N3343D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Elevator, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft was destroyed by fire following a ground loop during a touch-and-go landing. The pilot stated that he did not place the elevator in the full up position after landing, which he felt reduced directional response to both the aerodynamic rudder and the steerable tail wheel. When the aircraft began to veer to the left, he added full power in an attempt to go around, which torqued the aircraft into a fully developed ground loop. During the ground loop, the right wingtip contacted the ground which caused the wing fuel tank to start leaking. The fuel was subsequently ignited and the fire consumed the aircraft.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper use of the elevator and his subsequent failure to maintain directional control during a touch-and-go landing. A factor in the accident was the pilot's application of full power following the loss of directional control, which increased the turning moment already generated by the initial swerve.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA203
- Event ID
- 20001208X08168
- Case number
- LAX97LA203
- 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 1997-06-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 40767eb459ba2cb9a6df8da8fb08e8b77dafdbddc3a24144388d3e4cad344edd; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:29:16.870Z.