NYC07CA097 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident: loss of control on ground/water while taxiing
From Eagle Lake, ME (no airport) to Ashland, ME
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07CA097
- 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
- Government
- 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 A185F
- 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
- N4756E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eagle Lake, ME (no airport)To Ashland, ME
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Taxi
- 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 › Aircraft 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 pilot landed the Cessna A185F, which was equipped with skis, on a frozen slush covered lake without incident. The pilot stated that the airplane required a lot of engine power to taxi. While taxiing, the pilot felt a slight bump, and initiated a left turn, which required additional engine power. The tail of the airplane quickly shifted to the right. The pilot immediately applied right rudder and pulled the power back; however, the right ski sunk into the slush, and the airplane nosed over onto the right wing. Examination of the airplane did not reveal any preaccident mechanical malfunctions, nor did the pilot report any. The pilot reported 1,924 hours of total flight experience, which included about 1,660 hours in the same make and model as the accident airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control while taxiing, which resulted in a nose over. A factor in this accident was the frozen, slush covered lake.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07CA097
- Event ID
- 20070518X00585
- Case number
- NYC07CA097
- 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: b507fdd47a87f352de9fc3c5ea4d215bb310c0e1d3cd9ace2c030b760a80d480; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:14:16.152Z.