LAX01LA300 · Cessna 182G
Arrow Aviation Cessna 182G · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS) to Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA300
- 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 182G
- 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
- N3250S
- Operator
- Arrow Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), Colorado Springs, COTo Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT), Phoenix, 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
- En route · descent
- 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 object
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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 › Proper descent rate, not obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Proper descent rate, premature
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on approach, at night, the airplane collided with 60-foot power lines approximately 4 miles from the airport. The airplane came to rest inverted. The flight had departed from Colorado Springs, Colorado, and was destined for Phoenix, Arizona. The airport elevation was 3,550 feet msl, with a traffic pattern altitude of 4,350 feet (800 feet agl). The airplane's altimeter read 2,850 feet. Witnesses observed the airplane flying at a low altitude and then a dust cloud. They also observed fuel flowing out of the engine. Recovery personnel noted about 12 gallons of fuel was recovered from the left wing. No fuel was recovered from the right wing because it had ruptured. Fuel was observed and smelled on the ground around the accident site. Unsuccessful attempts were made to obtain information from the pilot.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to obtain/maintain a proper descent rate, as well as prematurely starting his decent during nighttime operations, subsequently colliding with 60-foot power lines 4 miles from the airport.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA300
- Event ID
- 20010912X01922
- Case number
- LAX01LA300
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-09-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5a307ef6060fc774eac677ed1d147c46976ac014ed23802ee6d055520eb7c1cd; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:50:41.509Z.