DEN04LA034 · Cessna 182
Cessna 182 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Kelly Air Park (CO15) to 18V · Hudson, OH
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04LA034
- 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 182
- 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
- N5609B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Kelly Air Park (CO15), Elbert, COTo 18V · Hudson, OH
- 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
- Aircraft performance, crosswind capability › Exceeded
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Ground loop/swerve, encountered
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 said he was landing on runway 33 into a left 30-degree crosswind (later he said it was a 70-degree crosswind). "An apparent gust" of approximately 40 mph "caused the airplane to ground loop to the left side of the runway. The airplane departed the runway, "it appears the right wheel dug into the sandy ground," and the airplane nosed over. According to the Wind Component Chart, under the conditions described by the pilot, a 30-degree, 40 mph crosswind would produce a crosswind component of 20 mph. A 70-degree, 40 mph crosswind would produce a crosswind component of 38 mph. According to a spokesperson for the airplane manufacturer, the maximum crosswind component for the airplane is 15 mph.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain directional control due to an excessive crosswind component, resulting in an uncontrolled groundloop/swerve. Contributing factors were the crosswind gust and the soft, sandy terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04LA034
- Event ID
- 20040108X00037
- Case number
- DEN04LA034
- 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: fdbd492bdf4e57bd559ed23eb974c2bfa08a25e353c962b232a3dfca34fd95ad; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:03:02.579Z.