IAD98LA102 · Cessna 185
Cessna 185 · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From S. WATTUPA POND, MA (no airport) to No airport
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD98LA102
- 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 185
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N114LS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From S. WATTUPA POND, MA (no airport)To 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 · 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/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(cfi) › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Go-around, delayed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Westport, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Upon arriving at the Westport River, the flight instructor directed the pilot to perform a power off landing (simulated engine failure). When it became apparent that the airplane was not going to reach the intended point of landing, a turn to the north was initiated to set up an approach for landing, 'a little quick and with a tailwind.' The airplane impacted the water, and the flight instructor initiated full power to go around, but was unable to maintain control. The airplane impacted the water a second time, cartwheeled, and came to rest inverted in the water. Examination of the wreckage by a Federal Aviation Administration Inspector revealed no pre-impact malfunctions of the flight controls.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain control of the airplane and his delayed decision to go-around. Factors related to the accident were the flight instructor's improper inflight decision to land downwind and his inadequate compensation for wind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD98LA102
- Event ID
- 20001211X10882
- Case number
- IAD98LA102
- 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: 27803a98c1f0e72db0ec88c523305ef7fb27dbce0027c922c7b04262aaaf50b2; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:01:00.582Z.