SEA02LA112 · Cessna 182L
Cessna 182L · Accident: hard landing
From McCall Municipal Airport (MYL) to Donald D. Coski Memorial Airport (U84)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA02LA112
- 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 182L
- 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
- N42505
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McCall Municipal Airport (MYL), McCall, IDTo Donald D. Coski Memorial Airport (U84), Donnelly, ID
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Descent, excessive
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who had set up a 600 to 700 foot per minute rate of descent in order to practice a "canyon approach" to a high density altitude turf airstrip, failed to add enough power to sufficiently arrest the descent rate prior to touchdown. The aircraft therefore hit the runway hard and bounced back into the air. At that point the pilot added full power and tried to push the nose down against the force of significant nose up trim. During his attempt to maintain control of the aircraft and get it back onto the runway, the airplane drifted to the left and collided with some nearby trees. Soon after the impact, the aircraft caught on fire, and although both occupants were able to escape, the aircraft was destroyed by fire. The density altitude was determined to be approximately 6,000 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to arrest an excessive descent rate during an attempted landing, and his inadequate recovery from a bounced landing. Factors include a high density altitude , and trees near the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA02LA112
- Event ID
- 20020628X01002
- Case number
- SEA02LA112
- 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: 6f1cbaea9f08efa0de46bd5384ee4ae4b8960b1727266c70227fbb92f00f595c; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:37:57.495Z.