LAX05FA079 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Unknown to Adelanto, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05FA079
- 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
- 1 · 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 180
- 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
- N2882A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From UnknownTo Adelanto, 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- 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
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane collided with terrain following a loss of control during an attempted go-around. This was the pilot's first landing at the airport. The pilot flew the airplane upwind on the northern side of the runway, crossed midfield, and turned downwind for left traffic on runway 25. There was a quartering tailwind from the pilot's right side. A witness said that the airplane appeared stable as it was on downwind, on the base leg, and on final. The witness lost sight of the airplane as it descended below the horizon. He then heard the engine power up. As he reacquired the airplane, he noted that the nose was up much higher than he normally sees airplanes on climb out. The wings were rocking left and right. The airplane rolled about 45 degrees left, and the nose started to fall. The last time that the witness saw the airplane, it was still in a 45-degree left bank, and the nose was falling level with the horizon. The engine sound stopped as he heard a thud. He said that the engine sounded strong until the thud, and it did not sputter or backfire. The pilot did not hold a current medical certificate.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain sufficient airspeed to avoid a stall during an attempted go-around, resulting in a loss of control and collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05FA079
- Event ID
- 20050211X00183
- Case number
- LAX05FA079
- 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: 72814c84e7625cc01f17ed458fcaaf33d23086bc69c97c1a8b5d6cef401b4479; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:07:58.344Z.