DEN03FA059 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT) to Eagle County Regional Airport (EGE)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03FA059
- 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 A185F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N53008
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT), Grand Junction, COTo Eagle County Regional Airport (EGE), Eagle, CO
- 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
- Maneuvering · turn to reverse direction
- 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 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Judgment, poor
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The wind was from 230 to 280 at 24 knots when the pilot taxied for an intersection takeoff from runway 29. The tower controller said that during the takeoff roll, the airplane drifted off the right side of the runway and stirred up a cloud of dust. Other witnesses saw the dust cloud, but thought it was due to propeller wash or a wind gust. Immediately after liftoff, the airplane "took on a pronounced crab to the left into the wind." The pilot remarked, "Well, that was gustier than I thought, guys." The controller replied, "...looks pretty rough up there." As the airplane flew away the controller remarked, "Sure does not look like an attractive flight this evening." The pilot answered, "No, but it is time to go home." Nearby workmen said that on the evening of the accident, there was scattered rain showers of moderate intensity in the area. The airplane was found 2 days later. No discrepancies were noted during the wreckage examination. The airplane was certificated in the restricted category, and approved for "agriculture and pest control" operations. Only the two front seats were installed in the airplane. The rear two seats had been removed and were later found in the pilot's hangar. In addition to the pilot, there were three passengers aboard.
Probable cause
the pilot's poor judgment and his failure to maintain aircraft control. Contributing factors were the high winds and downdrafts, and the pilot's self-induced pressure to go home.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03FA059
- Event ID
- 20030403X00427
- Case number
- DEN03FA059
- 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 2003-03-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0a30e60ea444e43095303bd31fe8c96ce4c0952fa766aea0a647284eea10bbca; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:21:30.760Z.