IAD05LA009 · Cessna 120
Cessna 120 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water while taxiing
From Windham Airport (IJD) to Windham Airport (IJD)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05LA009
- 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 120
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 120
- 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
- N1811N
- Operator
- Adam Van Voorhis
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Windham Airport (IJD), Willimantic, CTTo Windham Airport (IJD), Willimantic, CT
- 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
- Taxi
- 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 › Brakes(normal), 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 commercial pilot was rated in helicopters only, and was receiving instruction in airplanes. He had accrued 8 hours of total airplane time, all of which was in the tail-wheeled accident airplane. During this instructional flight, the pilot demonstrated difficulty with proper brake control, and the instructor elected to practice braking and turning. While they taxied forward at 15 mph, the instructor asked the pilot to turn the airplane around. The pilot initiated an immediate right turn to reverse direction that oriented the tail into the wind. The tail rose up in the turn and the airplane continued around and over onto its nose. The pilot said that he intended to slow the airplane before the turn, but that his braking was "uneven", and resulted in a "hard" right turn and the nose over. Both pilots reported that there were no mechanical difficulties with the airplane.
Probable cause
the pilot's loss of directional control due to his uneven application of brakes. A factor in the accident was the tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05LA009
- Event ID
- 20041129X01874
- Case number
- IAD05LA009
- 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: 336c98144132aee0f98e3840b3ba7176812f4d3782243643b833a8dc85440a21; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:33:14.080Z.