DEN90LA024 · Cessna 182L
Cessna 182L · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From Telluride Regional Airport (TEX) to Telluride Regional Airport (TEX)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN90LA024
- 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 182L
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N42699
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Telluride Regional Airport (TEX), Telluride, COTo Telluride Regional Airport (TEX)
- 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
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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
- Airspeed › Inadequate
- Dual student › Flare, improper
- Dual student › Proper alignment, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
- Stall/mush
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Dove Creek, CO, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE STUDENT PILOT WAS MAKING A LANDING ON A 4000 X 25 FOOT DIRT RUNWAY WITH A RIGHT, QUARTERING HEADWIND. AFTER THE STUDENT FLARED, THE AIRPLANE FLOATED ABOUT 10 FEET ABOVE THE SURFACE, THEN DRIFTED TO THE LEFT UNTIL IT WAS OVER A CULTIVATED FIELD BESIDE THE RUNWAY. THE INSTRUCTOR PILOT (CFI) TOOK CONTROL OF THE PLANE AND ADDED POWER TO GO AROUND; HOWEVER, POWER DID NOT RESPOND IMMEDIATELY. THE AIRPLANE THEN STALLED, LANDED HARD IN THE CULTIVATED FIELD, AND NOSED OVER.
Probable cause
IMPROPER FLARE BY THE STUDENT PILOT, HIS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN RUNWAY ALIGNMENT, AND A DELAY BY THE FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR (CFI) IN INITIATING REMEDIAL ACTION, WHICH RESULTED IN A LOSS OF AIRSPEED AND A STALL/MUSH AFTER THE AIRCRAFT DRIFTED OVER A CULTIVATED FIELD BESIDE THE RUNWAY. RELATED FACTORS WERE: THE CROSSWIND AND SOFT TERRAIN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN90LA024
- Event ID
- 20001213X29782
- Case number
- DEN90LA024
- 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: 48be5799a413b28a3b9793a6160a8307bff7baab97f401c18d485a2329bffd1c; retrieved 2026-09-21T15:47:02.709Z.