LAX03TA174 · Cessna 182Q
Cessna 182Q · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL) to Winnemucca Municipal Airport (WMC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03TA174
- 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 182Q
- 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
- N4892N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL), So Lake Tahoe, CATo Winnemucca Municipal Airport (WMC), Winnemucca, NV
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 in flight
- 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
- Flt control syst, elevator control cable/rod › Not safetied
- Flt control syst, elevator control cable/rod › Separation
- Pilot in command › Elevator, not available
- Unknown › Miscellaneous
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Pitch control was lost during the takeoff initial climb due to a separated elevator control cable and the aircraft nosed over during an off-airport forced landing. During climb out, both pilots noted an increasing nose high pitch attitude and pushed forward on their respective yokes in an effort to regain aircraft control. The aircraft did not respond to control yoke inputs and the certified flight instructor (CFI) was only able to regain control by retracting the flaps and retarding the throttle; however, there was no runway remaining to affect a landing. The CFI used engine power to maintain aircraft pitch control and setup for an off-airport landing. The nose landing gear dug into the soft ground after the airplane touched down and the aircraft nosed over. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector examined the airplane on scene. He removed the empennage inspection panel and found the DOWN elevator cable lying on the floor of the empennage. The safety wire for the DOWN elevator cable had been cut and pulled from the center hole, which allowed the turnbuckle to rotate until it separated from the turnbuckle eye. The other end remained attached to the swaged terminal by two threads. The UP elevator cable turnbuckle safety wire had also been cut on the eye side and pulled out of the center hole of the turnbuckle. The eye remained engaged in the turnbuckle by 19 3/4 turns, and the terminal end remained engaged by 18 1/2 turns. The flight control system was inspected with no further discrepancies noted. A review of the aircraft maintenance records, and shop work orders from maintenance facilities that had worked on the airplane, revealed no instances of maintenance activity that would have involved disturbing the elevator control cable turnbuckles since November 2000. The last annual inspection was completed 8 months and 75 flight hours prior to the accident; both the mechanic and inspector who performed the annual reported that the elevator control system was secure at that point.
Probable cause
a loss of pitch flight control authority due to the disconnection and separation of the elevator DOWN control cable turnbuckle. The separation of the turnbuckle was due to the severance of the safety wire by unknown persons at an unknown time.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03TA174
- Event ID
- 20030605X00795
- Case number
- LAX03TA174
- 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: 04f46e5c9f4dd1412bf0077c9910a594896a12a9799e0ea87cbe247f5f85a14f; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:28:26.433Z.