SEA05FA034 · Cessna 182R
Cessna 182R · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Monroe Regional Airport (KMLU) to Monroe Regional Airport (KMLU)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05FA034
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 182R
- 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
- N9474E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monroe Regional Airport (KMLU), Monroe, LATo Monroe Regional Airport (KMLU)
- 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
- Approach · IFR missed approach
- 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 in flight
- 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 › Aircraft 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 two Civil Air Patrol pilots took off on a dark night in order to shoot a number of practice instrument approaches in VFR conditions. The pilot who was believed to be sitting in the left seat and shooting the approaches was not instrument current at the time. After shooting the first approach, and just after being cleared for the second, the crew was advised that the ceiling had become 900 feet broken and that the field was then IFR. When queried by the controller, the crew said they wanted to continue their series of approaches via an IFR clearance. During the second approach they had trouble intercepting the localizer, and although they had by that time decided to make the next landing a full-stop, because they could not get established on the localizer, they eventually had to execute a missed approach. During the next approach they again had trouble getting established on the localizer, and when advised that they had a C130 following them on an approach for landing, the crew requested another missed approach. During that missed approach, while making a climbing turn in order to be repositioned for another approach, the flying pilot lost control of the aircraft, which descended into the waters of a shallow water collection pond/swamp.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot manipulating the controls to maintain aircraft control during a night missed approach in instrument meteorological conditions. Factors include a dark night and low ceilings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05FA034
- Event ID
- 20050125X00103
- Case number
- SEA05FA034
- 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 2005-01-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f490817cc714a725856dd792538fd137c43f0b03458285114e0fb9322b193749; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:09:04.188Z.