LAX04CA278 · Cessna A185F
Mariani Nut Cessna A185F · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From Gridley, CA to 2Q3 · Yolo, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04CA278
- 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 A185F
- 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
- N93DM
- Operator
- Mariani Nut
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gridley, CATo 2Q3 · Yolo, 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
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Rudder, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane veered left until impacting nearby trees seconds after taking off from an airstrip. The pilot had previously departed from the 1,800-foot-long private airstrip, but this was his first departure from the airstrip in the Cessna A185F, which has a 300-horsepower engine. No anomalies were detected with the airplane during the pilot's preflight inspection. The pilot indicated that during the initial climb in the calm wind, he had inadequately applied corrective rudder to compensate for the airplane's left turning tendency (also known as torque/P-factor).
Probable cause
The pilot's improper use of the rudder to correct for torque and P-factor effects and failure to maintain obstacle clearance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04CA278
- Event ID
- 20040816X01231
- Case number
- LAX04CA278
- 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. 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: 2eb870aed1811423ce2adfbe892604b640870ae19fda8a9778bf87eacad9f7fd; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:59:30.851Z.