DEN07CA047 · Cessna 182G
Cessna 182G · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS) to Southeast Colorado Regional Airport (LAA)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07CA047
- 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 182G
- 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
- N2185R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), Colorado Sprngs, COTo Southeast Colorado Regional Airport (LAA), Lamar, CO
- 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 › 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
Prior to the night landing, the pilot verified with an airport employee, that the runway lights were operational. During the landing flare to runway 26 the pilot lost visual contact with the runway due to the snow banks obscuring the runway lights. The airplane landed and veered off of the runway into the snow bank, resulting in substantial damage. The pilot reported no anomalies with the airplane or its systems. According to several witnesses, the pilot reported to them that his landing lights were not functional at the time of the landing. Several Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) had been issued prior to the accident. These addressed 4 foot snow banks on runway 8/26, 7 foot snow banks on runway 18/36 and no braking action on runway 18/36. After the accident the airport manager issued a NOTAM about obscured runway lights.
Probable cause
the pilot's inability to maintain directional control resulting in an impact with a snow bank. Contributing factors include the obscured runway lights, inoperative landing lights, and the pilot's improper decision to operate an airplane with known systems deficiencies.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07CA047
- Event ID
- 20070206X00139
- Case number
- DEN07CA047
- 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 2007-01-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5d8082e303cea6e91cf08fdda5bbaa013daa9bcf3e1d49bda99a51c42d4e0949; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:05:43.973Z.