LAX06CA042 · Cessna A185E
Cessna A185E · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Payson Airport (PAN) to Show Low Regional Airport (SOW)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06CA042
- 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 A185E
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N4562F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Payson Airport (PAN), Payson, AZTo Show Low Regional Airport (SOW), Showlow, AZ
- 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
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, 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 airplane ground looped while on the landing roll. As the pilot entered the vicinity of the destination airport, he estimated that the wind was blowing from 350 to 050 degrees with a velocity of about 10 knots. He entered the downwind leg of the traffic pattern while maintaining visual contact with the windsock located at the airport. After touching down on the runway surface, the airplane encountered a crosswind from the left. The airplane ground looped and the right main landing gear collapsed. Subsequently the right wing contacted terrain, damaging the spar. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane. The winds reported by the airport's Aviation Routine Weather Report (METAR) about 25 minutes prior to the accident were 360 degree at 9 knots. The winds reported about 35 minutes after the accident were 340 degrees at 10 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate compensation for crosswind conditions and failure to maintain directional control, which resulted in a ground loop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06CA042
- Event ID
- 20051206X01942
- Case number
- LAX06CA042
- 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: acdda0a9982f3df31f05d1570719b7045b3269e7222cbcc10e193aa1225c54de; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:51:32.560Z.