LAX98LA060 · Cessna 180H
Cessna 180H · Accident: hard landing
From Van Nuys Airport (VNY) to Presidente Itamar Franco Airport (IZA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA060
- 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 180H
- 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
- N123LJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, CATo Presidente Itamar Franco Airport (IZA)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Flare, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Santa Ynez, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Before landing the pilot overflew the airport and checked the windsock. He noted that the winds were at a direct 90-degree angle from the runway and gusting to approximately 35 knots. The pilot made repeated attempts to contact UNICOM, but did not receive a response. The airplane touched down hard and veered off runway 08. A pilot in the pattern behind the accident aircraft reported to a witness that he had heard the accident pilot attempting to contact UNICOM, and UNICOM's subsequent responses. The witness reported that the pilot made left-hand traffic for the runway, which has a published right-hand traffic pattern. The witness also reported that the winds were approximately 130 degrees gusting to about 35 knots. The person monitoring UNICOM reported to the witness that he did receive transmissions from the pilot and had reported airport advisories to him. After the accident the pilot reported to the witness that he would not have attempted to land at the airport had he been able to receive airport advisories from UNICOM. No mechanical difficulties were noted by the pilot.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare. Related factors were the crosswind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA060
- Event ID
- 20001208X09337
- Case number
- LAX98LA060
- 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: ba345a8a4281079abd79099ef897c8c929e228aff39548b3766372139b56dc46; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:09:06.877Z.