SEA03LA071 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Richland Airport (RLD) to Tri Cities Airport (PSC)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA071
- 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 180
- 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
- N180MK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Richland Airport (RLD), Richland, WATo Tri Cities Airport (PSC), Pasco, WA
- 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
- Pilot in command › Ground loop/swerve, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, inadequate
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 was attempting a three-point landing, inadvertently let the main wheels touch the runway first, resulting in the aircraft bouncing back into the air. Just after it touched down a second time (on all three wheels), the tower asked him if he could make a turnoff at the next taxiway. The pilot therefore looked toward the taxiway in order to determine if it was reasonable to make a turnoff there. When he refocused his attention to the runway, the aircraft was veering to the left. He therefore attempted to get it realigned with the runway, but was unable to do so. Almost immediately thereafter, the aircraft ground-looped. During the ground-loop, one wing impacted the runway, and then the aircraft tipped up onto its nose.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate remedial action when his aircraft began to veer during the landing roll, and his ultimate failure to maintain directional control which resulted in a ground loop. Factors include the pilot's momentary diversion of his attention during the landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA071
- Event ID
- 20030430X00601
- Case number
- SEA03LA071
- 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: 2fed1bbfa1870a8d64d3cea9b822247ccfae1f521b299e7fdf3e9892e8ccb426; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:20:55.186Z.