SEA98LA061 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: hard landing
From Roberts Field (RDM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA061
- 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
- N2933C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roberts Field (RDM)To 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 · 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 passenger › Descent, excessive
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Because the wind conditions had become too challenging to continue practice landings, the pilot, who had accumulated about 35 hours in conventional gear aircraft, decided to make a full-stop landing. During the landing attempt, the aircraft hit hard, bounced back into the air, and began to drift past the lateral boundary of the runway. At that point there was a voluntary transfer of control of the aircraft to the private pilot-rated passenger, who was co-owner of the airplane. The passenger-pilot, who had approximately 180 hours of conventional gear time, elected not to execute a go-around, but instead continued down the runway and attempted a full stop landing. During that landing attempt, the aircraft hit the runway surface hard enough to damage the gear leg attach saddle, and soon after touchdown, the right gear leg folded back underneath the aircraft.
Probable cause
The passenger-pilot's excessive rate of descent during touchdown. Factors include the pilot-in-command's inadequate recovery from a hard/bounced landing, the passenger-pilot's failure to execute a go-around after taking control of the aircraft, and gusty crosswinds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA061
- Event ID
- 20001211X09958
- Case number
- SEA98LA061
- 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: 36a0c1b003339292134645105b3226ae01cd4570b1438ec2e4ab0b84b8706b7b; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:53:52.102Z.