FTW98LA020 · Cessna 180J
Cessna 180J · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Q58 · Santa Rosa, NM to No airport
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA020
- 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 180J
- 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
- N7527K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Q58 · Santa Rosa, NMTo No airport
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he made a normal approach and wheel landing to the north, because the wind sock indicated a left quartering headwind at 10 knots. As soon as the tail wheel touched the runway, it began to shimmy. The airplane veered to the left and the pilot corrected using right brake. The airplane then veered to the right, struck a small embankment, and spun around to the right, coming to rest on a southerly heading. A statement submitted by the pilot-rated passenger corroborated the pilot's report, although he said the wind shifted suddenly as the tail wheel touched the ground. Examination of the tail wheel by FAA inspectors revealed no apparent previous damage. Damage to the airplane was confined to the main landing gear, right wing and left elevator.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the airplane during its landing roll. Encounter with an embankment (dirt bank) was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA020
- Event ID
- 20001208X09014
- Case number
- FTW98LA020
- 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: 86dab33b08b356a21127b9e72ee700f3162a4e5d127ed413dafc5622ea6a5dfb; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:20:01.952Z.