ATL99LA101 · Cessna A188B
Cessna A188B · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From MS to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL99LA101
- 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 A188B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- N53198
- Operator
- Michael Lewis
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From MSTo 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
- Maneuvering · aerial application
- 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
- Flight control, aileron › Not secured
- Miscellaneous, bolt/nut/fastener/clamp/spring › Improper
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, while surveying a field for future work, the airplane became uncontrollable. He selected an emergency landing area, and made a forced landing in a field. The airplane sustained structural damage during the forced landing when the left wing collided with the ground, and the airplane cartwheeled. During the examination of the airplane, the pilot reported that the left aileron control bolt had separated from the control surface. When the left aileron was removed from the airframe, the missing bolt was recovered from the inter-structure of the wing area. The bolt was reinstalled through the aileron assembly, and appeared to provide enough thread material to secure the aileron assembly. The examination of the bolt assembly also disclosed that the bolt that connected the forward end of the control rod to the bell crank was too short and did not protrude through the nylon lock on the nut. The rod-end bearing was also seized and would not move.
Probable cause
The improper installation of a nut and bolt assembly by a maintenance personnel that resulted in the in-flight loss of control of the left ailiron.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL99LA101
- Event ID
- 20001212X18926
- Case number
- ATL99LA101
- 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: bfe41872168fcd4e04b81aa41952d97bc0d219d6107f75b045f359d96def2268; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:47:57.550Z.