SEA03LA122 · Cessna 185F
Cessna 185F · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Lexington Airport (9S9) to 9S9
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA122
- 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 185F
- 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
- N6497E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lexington Airport (9S9), Lexington, ORTo 9S9
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, after performing two or three touch-and-go landings, he departed the airport to practice aerial proficiency maneuvers. Upon his return, he made a wheel landing, and although the touchdown and the initial part of the landing roll were uneventful, just as he was starting to lower the tail the aircraft started pulling to the left. He therefore attempted to realign the aircraft with the runway by using right rudder and additional breaking on the right wheel but, according to the pilot, he overcorrected and inadvertently redirected the aircraft toward the right side of the runway. As he continued trying to get the aircraft aligned with the runway, it departed the right side of the landing surface. As the right main gear departed the runway, it encountered soft terrain, and the aircraft spun quickly around to the right. During this sequence of events, the left wing and horizontal stabilizer contacted the surface of the ground. The pilot later stated that he thought he may have had a partially deflated or flat tire on the left main landing gear.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during the landing roll. A partially deflated tire and soft terrain were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA122
- Event ID
- 20030714X01093
- Case number
- SEA03LA122
- 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 2003-06-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5dfdb46b4911f58b911cf061a8ffb068a0e2f6a26f01d556bef837a0f4aa0e8b; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:05:45.684Z.