CHI07CA136 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP) to Worthington Municipal Airport (OTG)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07CA136
- 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 182P
- 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
- N52621
- Operator
- Samuel L. White · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP), Rapid City, SDTo Worthington Municipal Airport (OTG), Worthington, MN
- 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 › 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 airplane was substantially damaged when it departed the runway (2,555 feet by 100 feet, turf) during landing and encountered an irrigation ditch. The pilot reported that after takeoff he intended to track a Very-High-Frequency Omni Range (VOR) navigation station to an intermediate fuel stop before continuing to his final destination. About 4 hours into the flight he attempted to contact air traffic control in order to verify his position; however, he was unable to establish contact. At that point, he began "to lose confidence in [his] present position" and decided to establish a heading he believed was toward his intermediate fuel stop. After an additional hour of flight, he became concerned about his remaining fuel and contacted a Flight Service Station (FSS). He informed them that he was "lost and short on fuel." The FSS located the flight and provided vectors to a nearby alternate airport. Upon landing at the alternate airport "the aircraft went into a skid, hit a runway cone and came to a stop across from the end of the runway. Just a few feet beyond [an] irrigation ditch." The pilot noted that he did not have experience landing on grass runways. The pilot did not indicate any failures or malfunctions associated with the aircraft's flight control system or engine. He did note the possibility of an "intermittent radio transmission failure" as a possible factor contributing to his becoming lost prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during landing on the grass airstrip. A contributing factor was the pilot's limited experience operating on grass runways. Additional factors were the runway cone struck during landing and the irrigation ditch encountered during the runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07CA136
- Event ID
- 20070622X00780
- Case number
- CHI07CA136
- 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: 038e53ae415748e66af6d64ffd0ea3c189cad430a5cbbb4383a967a86e2e6338; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:50:23.804Z.