LAX04CA183 · Cessna 182C
Cessna 182C · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Ukiah Municipal Airport (UKI) to Garberville Airport (O16)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04CA183
- 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 182C
- 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
- N8872T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ukiah Municipal Airport (UKI), Ukiah, CATo Garberville Airport (O16), Garberville, CA
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Directional 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
The pilot lost directional control while attempting to land, and the airplane veered off the runway and nosed over. The pilot was attempting to land on runway 36. He descended to traffic pattern altitude and followed another airplane for a right pattern. On the downwind and base leg he did not have the runway in sight due to the mountainous terrain surrounding the airport. On short final the windsock and runway became visible. The airplane passed over the threshold and encountered moderate to severe turbulence with wind shear. The airplane touched down on the runway hard and bounced back into the air. The pilot looked at the windsock and noted a sudden 180-degree shift in the wind direction. The airplane floated in ground effect due to the tailwind conditions. He opted not to make a go-around because he thought that he would not be able to clear the mountainous terrain. The airplane touched down in a grassy area to the right of the runway. It continued to roll and encountered a descending embankment. The airplane came to rest inverted. The pilot reported that the winds at the time of the accident were from 360 degrees at 15 to 20 knots, with gusts and moderate to severe turbulence. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate compensation for the wind conditions and failure to maintain directional control of the airplane. Factors in the accident were the terrain induced turbulent conditions, wind shear, a sudden wind shift, and a tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04CA183
- Event ID
- 20040508X00576
- Case number
- LAX04CA183
- 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: 0a0bf618e687141dd6b1a769ff4724fe53f57d1cb49f361e5f41feabe92d52e5; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:44:31.017Z.