NYC07CA059 · Cessna 182E
Cessna 182E · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Hanover County Municipal Airport (OFP) to Ashland, VA
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07CA059
- 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 182E
- 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
- N9392X
- Operator
- Darin Dunham
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hanover County Municipal Airport (OFP), Ashland, VATo Ashland, VA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the Cessna 182E reported that he was conducting night proficiency takeoffs and landings. The first two takeoffs and landings occurred normally; however, after the third takeoff, just after the airplane had lifted off the runway, the pilot's seat slipped all the way to the rear stops. The pilot then pulled the throttle back to prevent a further climb, and the airplane landed hard on the runway. A subsequent examination of the seat rails, seat rail pinholes, seat adjustment pin and coil spring by a manufacturer's representative and a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector revealed no anomalies. Airworthiness Directive 87-20-03 R2 had been complied with, and an annual inspection had been performed about 7 months earlier. Another FAA inspector, about the same size of the pilot, subsequently tested the seat locking mechanisms while sitting in the seat. He found that when the seat locking pin was secured in any of the pin holes, he could not move the seat. However, when the seat pin was not securely locked in a hole, with "very little" weight shift, the seat would slide backwards to the rear stops without the pin engaging any of the pinholes.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly secure the seat locking pin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07CA059
- Event ID
- 20070409X00379
- Case number
- NYC07CA059
- 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: 4313cc1ea063ee937a634e9b63b6e6309a0779fc454883cad276423bc11b0895; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:04:44.189Z.