LAX85LA020 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: hard landing
From San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT) to San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX85LA020
- 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
- N4902A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT), El Monte, CATo San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT), El Monte, CA
- 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 in command › Brakes(normal), improper use of
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A LOW TIME PVT PLT FLARED THE ACFT WHICH TOUCHED DOWN HARD AND BOUNCED. ON THE SECOND TOUCHDOWN, THE ACFT ENTERED A GROUND LOOP TO THE RIGHT. APPLICATION OF RIGHT BRAKE AND RUDDER DID NOT CORRECT THE SITUATION. THE LEFT WING AND NOSE WENT DOWN & THE ACFT WENT OVER ONTO ITS BACK. THE ACFT WAS EQUIPPED WITH CONVENTIONAL LANDING GEAR. THE PLT REPORTED THAT AFTER HE HAD OBTAINED A PVT PLT CERTIFICATE ON 03/03/84 AND HAD NOT FLOWN AFTER THAT DATE UNTIL THE DAY OF THE ACCIDENT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX85LA020
- Event ID
- 20001214X41409
- Case number
- LAX85LA020
- 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: 442c8971cdcc6eec368e5234bee783a6e260af3ab03f7a6a2622d3ca56673e0d; retrieved 2026-09-23T18:59:32.866Z.