LAX01LA128 · Cessna 305A
Cessna 305A · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Needles Airport (EED) to Winslow Lindbergh Regional Airport (INW)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA128
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 305A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 305
- 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
- N5188G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Needles Airport (EED), Needles, CATo Winslow Lindbergh Regional Airport (INW), Winslow, AZ
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 on ground/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
- Dual student › Control interference, inadvertent
- Flt control syst, rudder control attach points › Movement restricted
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student made a normal landing with his CFI in the conventional gear airplane that the student had recently purchased. Seconds after touchdown the airplane started turning slowly to the left. The CFI applied rudder pressure for the correction, but was unable to move the right rudder pedal more than 3 or 4 inches. The left turn continued, and the CFI shouted for the student to "get off the controls." The CFI reported that he pushed "very hard" on the right rudder in an effort to stop the turn to the left. However, the right rudder would not move farther regardless of the force applied. The turn to the left continued to accelerate. Directional control was subsequently lost, and as the airplane ground looped the right wing tip touched the ground and the right wheel separated from the strut at the axle. The investigation revealed that the student's shoe size is 14, he weighs about 250 pounds, and he is 6 feet 6 inches tall. During rollout the student's left foot had slipped off the rudder pedal. It had become jammed between the top portion of the pedal and the console, thus restricting the pedal's movement. This control interference resulted in the CFI's inability to take corrective action to preclude the loss of control.
Probable cause
The student's inadvertent restriction of the rudder pedal's movement during landing rollout precipitated the loss of directional control and ground loop. A finding was that remedial action by the CFI was not possible due to the student’s control interference.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA128
- Event ID
- 20010328X00663
- Case number
- LAX01LA128
- 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, coordinates. 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: ba941b86ec8d332ebde8c55f8d323fdcf1e0ded176a1ab4268a80b3a47478bde; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:05:03.502Z.