NYC05FA100 · Cessna 182Q
Cessna 182Q · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Sussex Airport (FWN) to Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC05FA100
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 182Q
- 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
- N21005
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sussex Airport (FWN), Sussex, NJTo Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR), Bridgeport, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 instrument rated private pilot was on a cross-country flight in instrument meteorological conditions. Shortly after takeoff, he reported to air traffic control that he was at his assigned altitude of 3,000 feet. This was the last known communication from the pilot. Radar data depicted the airplane flying in a southeasterly direction after takeoff, and climbing to about 3,000 feet. During a time span of about 3 minutes, the airplane made non-ATC directed turns from the southeast, to the south, and to the northeast, before it disappeared from radar. The wreckage was located at an elevation of approximately 1,300 feet, about 6 miles southeast of the departure airport. The crash site was in a forest with large trees. The lack of a horizontal crash path through the trees, and the impact damage the airplane received, were indicative of a vertical, or near vertical impact with trees and terrain. Examination of the airplane disclosed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomaly. A weather observation taken about the time of the accident at the departure airport included an overcast ceiling at 1,600 feet, and an identical temperature and dew point of 53 degrees F.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control while maneuvering, which resulted in an uncontrolled descent and impact with the ground. Factors in this accident were clouds, and the pilot's spatial disorientation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC05FA100
- Event ID
- 20050630X00905
- Case number
- NYC05FA100
- 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: 0656f383b04b8b3de5a5df926bffc31ce57e81664659e4d08adf8695a31df47c; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:01:03.968Z.