LAX01LA224 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Falcon Field (FFZ) to Falcon Field (FFZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA224
- 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 182P
- 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
- N7336Q
- Operator
- Yost, Clinton C. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Falcon Field (FFZ), Mesa, AZTo Falcon Field (FFZ), 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Ground loop/swerve, not corrected
- Pilot in command › Rudder, improper use of
- Pilot in command › Torque/p-factor, not corrected
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During takeoff the airplane lost directional control, landed on the left side of the runway, collided with a ditch, crossed back over the runway, and came to rest on the right side of the runway. The pilot reported that a wind disturbance turned him to the left of the runway and made it hard to control the airplane. He stated the winds were reported as 40 degrees off to the right of the runway heading at 11 knots and there were no gusts. The closest weather reporting station was Phoenix Sky Harbor airport (PHX) about 17 statute miles east of Mesa airport, and at 1156, was reporting the winds to be 250 at 13 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper use of the rudder control to correct for torque and P-factor effects, which resulted in a loss of directional control and an inadvertent ground loop/swerve.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA224
- Event ID
- 20010712X01404
- Case number
- LAX01LA224
- 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: 3793efa05a0e0e8e056033df94cd2da8675bf402e20f8b7693856ee952178656; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:49:35.863Z.