SEA04CA170 · Cessna 180J
Cessna 180J · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during landing
From Cottonwood Municipal Airport (S84) to Pittsburg Land, OR
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
- SEA04CA170
- 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 180J
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N52096
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Cottonwood Municipal Airport (S84), Cottonwood, IDTo Pittsburg Land, OR
- 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 · aborted
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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 › Clearance, 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 reported that he first over flew runway 12, which is 1,050 feet in length, and determined that the windsock was indicating calm wind. The approach for landing was made at 65 mph with full flaps extended. The aircraft touched down about 50 to 100 feet from the threshold. The pilot reported that "... it didn't look good for stopping so I initiated a go-around. Rotation was a split second too late and the aircraft contacted some brush at the very end of the strip." The pilot reported that there was something hard in the brush which struck the outboard leading edge of the right side horizontal stabilizer. The pilot continued the flight to his destination and landed without further incident. Inspection of the right side horizontal stabilizer found a circular indentation to the outboard leading edge. Skin wrinkles were noted on the top and bottom surfaces.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from an object (pole) during an aborted landing. The pilot's delayed decision to abort the landing and a pole were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04CA170
- Event ID
- 20040909X01373
- Case number
- SEA04CA170
- 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 2004-08-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0e765b46956a55c2650dc2dbc2ef423fcd29815b3a9ec30679b394e388d0c17a; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:52:40.316Z.