LAX06LA198 · Cessna 182B
Cessna 182B · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From Placerville Airport (PVF) to Placerville Airport (PVF)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06LA198
- 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 182B
- 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
- N2404G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Placerville Airport (PVF), Placerville, CATo Placerville Airport (PVF)
- 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 engine power
- 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
- Object › Tree(s)
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
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 experienced a loss of engine power and collided with a tree during a forced landing. The student and flight instructor had practiced maneuvering in a local practice area for over 30 minutes. During a climb the certificated flight instructor (CFI) noticed that the engine's revolutions per minute (rpm) seemed low. The student pilot slightly retarded the throttle and propeller controls and the engine began to surge, subsequently quitting. The airplane's fuel quantity gauges indicated that the right tank had 1/4 fuel remaining and the left tank showed 1/2 fuel remaining. The CFI configured the airplane for a forced landing at a private dirt airstrip. With the airplane about 10 to 15 feet above ground level (agl), a crosswind was encountered (followed by a sudden tailwind) and the airplane collided with trees adjacent to the strip. A post accident examination of the engine after recovery from the accident site revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunction or failure that would have precluded normal operation. The fuel bladders were removed and inspected by cutting open the cell along the outer wall. The left bladder, manufactured in 1958, exhibited several distinct wrinkles peaking about 1-inch high at the most creased area. Significant creases were situated near the fuel pick up and stretched along the cord line about 29 inches in length. The fuel sending unit roller rested on one of the smaller crease about .6 inches tall. An airworthiness directive (AD) was issued in 1986 to prevent power loss or engine stoppage due to contamination of fuel system from water and debris trapped by fuel bladder wrinkles; the AD was marked as complied with in 1988.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons and encounter with trees during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06LA198
- Event ID
- 20060615X00742
- Case number
- LAX06LA198
- 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 2006-06-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: badce37c06512ebf24659f0aa21cd63ae90da64d15ecfaf1572f289efa598196; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:57:23.463Z.