LAX02LA127 · Cessna 180J
Cessna 180J · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Angwin Airport-Parrett Field (2O3) to Eastern Sierra Regional Airport (BIH)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA127
- 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 180J
- 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
- N7821k
- Operator
- Charles A. Dake, Jr · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Angwin Airport-Parrett Field (2O3), Angwin, CATo Eastern Sierra Regional Airport (BIH), Bishop, 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 · 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
- Airport facilities, runway/landing area condition › Uneven
- Pilot in command › 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
During landing rollout, the airplane encountered a deep water erosion depression in the runway's surface. Thereafter, the pilot lost directional control, and the airplane veered off the runway, collided with a rock, and nosed over. The gravel runway was not maintained and had an uneven washboard-like surface. During the previous 90 days, the pilot had landed at the airstrip about 6 times and had not experienced any mishap.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of directional control during landing rollout after encountering a water erosion rut in the runway's uneven surface.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA127
- Event ID
- 20020409X00480
- Case number
- LAX02LA127
- 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: 95005499c043526b33ef1c7793e84f6630bbd3ac173a8461f95c7d4605d7be95; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:01:33.760Z.