ATL07FA083 · Cessna 182Q
Cessna 182Q · Accident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From W H 'Bud' Barron Airport (DBN) to Asheville Regional Airport (AVL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL07FA083
- 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
- 3 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 182Q
- 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
- N735DP
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From W H 'Bud' Barron Airport (DBN), Dublin, GATo Asheville Regional Airport (AVL), Asheville, NC
- 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
- Approach · IFR initial approach
- 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
- Flight/nav instruments, directional gyro › Failure, total
- Vacuum system › Loose part/bolt/nut/clamp/etc
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While executing an approach in mountainous terrain, the instrument-rated private pilot requested help due to a malfunctioning directional gyro. The controller initiated giving the pilot vectors for a no-gyro approach to the airport, which included a climb. Shortly thereafter, the pilot advised the controller that the attitude indicator had failed. The controller continued to provide guidance to the pilot until radar contact was lost less than 2 minutes later. The airplane impacted a mountain about 2,300 feet below the last assigned altitude. Evidence at the scene indicated that the airplane had entered an uncontrolled descent prior to impact. Examination of the vacuum system revealed that the vacuum inlet line "B-Nut" fitting to the attitude indicator was loose and that contamination had entered the instrument. This indicated there was a leak in the vacuum system, and insufficient vacuum for the associated instruments.
Probable cause
The failure of the directional gyro and attitude indicator due to a vacuum system leak caused by a loose fitting. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to execute a partial panel, no-gyro approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL07FA083
- Event ID
- 20070509X00534
- Case number
- ATL07FA083
- 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. 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: 39647eadf772c1bbfd366644fc517ac20aeb58b015d32b40ee81c38f1591ce48; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:40:08.319Z.