ATL03IA073 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Tishomingo County Airport (01M) to Cook County Airport (15J)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03IA073
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- N696SP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tishomingo County Airport (01M), Belmont, MSTo Cook County Airport (15J), Adel CookCounty, GA
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Flight control, elevator attachment › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the personal flight was undetermined. While in cruise flight at 5000 feet, the pilot noticed the elevators on the canard wings vibrating abnormally. The vibrations increased throughout the airplane and the left canard was observed hanging down. The pilot reported the airplane's condition to Columbus Approach Control, and requested radar vectors to the nearest airport, Weedon Field, Eufaula, Alabama. The flight landed without further incident. The airplane was a 1973 model Cessna 182P. It was refurbished in 1998 when the canard was added through STC #SA485SW. The pilot did report the airplane having a mechanical malfunction with the nose control assembly left hand canard elevator. The part had a total time of 453 hours on it. The post-landing examination of the airplane revealed a separation of the left canard elevator bell crank from the elevator. The bell crank fasteners were intact. Further examination of the airplane revealed the end rib for the left canard flap was fractured at the location where the left control rod attachment bracket was attached. Wear was observed on the left control rod end fitting. The fatigue features emanated from multiple origins at both the exterior and interior sides of the end rib, consistent with reverse-bending fatigue.
Probable cause
Fatigue failure of end rib for the left canard flap.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03IA073
- Event ID
- 20030407X00443
- Case number
- ATL03IA073
- 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: 9b2ecec5274c5c4c86d0076df0debdf26bae220f59df1861d64a1296d23efd0d; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:26:54.120Z.