LAX05LA237 · Cessna A188B
Cessna A188B · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Yerington, NV to Eastern Sierra Regional Airport (BIH)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA237
- 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 A188B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- N731GE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yerington, NVTo Eastern Sierra Regional Airport (BIH), Bishop, 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Landing gear, tailwheel › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The tail wheel equipped airplane experienced a failure and separation of the tailwheel during the landing roll, which resulted in a ground loop. The pilot reported that the landing was normal but the airplane began to drift to the right shortly after touching down. He applied left rudder input to correct, but the airplane continued to drift to the right. He applied additional left rudder to no avail and a "violent tail wheel shimmy developed." The pilot reduced aft elevator control in an attempt to reduce the load on the tailwheel, but the shimmy became violent, and he had trouble keeping his feet on the rudder pedals. The pilot then heard a loud bang and the aircraft made a sudden turn to the left. The airplane ground looped and came to rest upright. The Federal Aviation Administration inspector who examined the airplane following the event reported that the tailwheel failed at its mount area but the control cables remained attached to their respective steering horns.
Probable cause
the failure of the tailwheel mount during the landing roll, which resulted in a ground loop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA237
- Event ID
- 20050811X01228
- Case number
- LAX05LA237
- 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: 78eb210bbfc72b3d22beb161665537fbf13436e40887619a61b9a94363156335; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:38:39.067Z.