SEA02LA144 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From Sulphur Creek Ranch Airport (ID74) to Caldwell Executive Airport (KEUL)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA02LA144
- 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
- N58818
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sulphur Creek Ranch Airport (ID74), Sulpher Creek, IDTo Caldwell Executive Airport (KEUL), Caldwell, 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/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 › Planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
In a written statement the private pilot reported that the airplane did not rotate when he expected it to, and that when it finally lifted off it was not developing full engine RPM. He further stated that once the airplane became airborne the flight controls were "mushy" and he elected to abort the takeoff from an altitude of approximately 20 feet above ground level (AGL). The airplane touched down beyond the departure end of the runway, in a bog, and nosed over. In his written statement the pilot attributed the lack of aircraft performance to; a high density altitude (estimated to be 7,698 MSL) and a 10 knot tail wind during takeoff. He also reported that the propeller control knob was incorrectly set to a high pitch low RPM setting during takeoff, and that he had not completed the before takeoff checklist prior to departure. The before takeoff checklist procedures for the Cessna 182P, as published in Section four of the Pilot's Operating Handbook (POH), specify that the propeller be placed in the "high RPM (full in)" position before takeoff.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate decision and his improper setting of the propeller controls. Contributing factors were a tailwind, high density altitude, and swampy terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA02LA144
- Event ID
- 20020808X01357
- Case number
- SEA02LA144
- 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: e53d7437ae7f92b94a5a663a5abb35147a1beaaa985b3bea57464751dc5941ef; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:35:35.630Z.