SEA98LA123 · Cessna 180H
Cessna 180H · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA123
- 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
- N91380
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 in flight
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after receiving the automated weather for the airport conditions, he taxied to the run-up area in preparation for departure. The pilot stated that he was aware of a crosswind from the left prior to departure. The pilot reported that during the takeoff he 'received a gust of wind.' The pilot had no memory of the sequence of events after this point. A witness reported that he observed the accident airplane on short final when the right wing suddenly went up in the air and the left wing struck the ground. The airplane pivoted around on the left wing and the airplane came to rest inverted. The witness estimated that the winds were gusting at about 10 to 15 knots from the pilot's left side, and the airport flag was straight out. The airport manager reported that the AWOS was out of service at the time of the accident, but estimated that the winds were from 290 degrees at seven to eight knots, and gusting.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the wind conditions. Gusting winds were a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA123
- Event ID
- 20001211X10705
- Case number
- SEA98LA123
- 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: 3637180ee9f434f6a7477ff7e0e26c0f01f2db37acee251dcbe6c95e74da1c43; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:25:09.979Z.