MIA02FA059 · Cessna TR182
Cessna TR182 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From George T Lewis Airport (CDK) to Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02FA059
- 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
- 4 · 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 TR182
- 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
- N5136S
- Operator
- Russell W. Blaser · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From George T Lewis Airport (CDK), Cedar Key, FLTo Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV), Gainesville, FL
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness observed the airplane's lights, and heard the engine at full power after the airplane departed the runway. He saw the airplane turned left, at an angle of about 45 degrees, and then descend into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico about 1/4 mile from the airport. Witnesses described the weather as a dark night, with no stars visible, patches of fog, and light haze existed over the water. Recovery personnel reported seeing fog at the crash site about 1 hour after the accident. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any discrepancies with either the airframe, engine, engine components, or propeller.
Probable cause
the failure of the pilot to maintain control of the airplane due to spatial disorientation resulting in the airplane descending and colliding with water. A factor in the accident was a dark night .
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02FA059
- Event ID
- 20020214X00217
- Case number
- MIA02FA059
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-02-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bdbc17dbab23ed2e5f97cedd6b5a49a98d7bbc3b418ec7b03b8de1d961db9a14; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:13:11.541Z.