DEN07CA139 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident during takeoff
From Lake City, CO (private airstrip) to Corpus Christi, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07CA139
- 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 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
- N185MR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake City, CO (private airstrip)To Corpus Christi, TX
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, improper
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, intentional
- Pilot in command › Short field takeoff/procedure, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was taking off on runway 04 (3,200 feet by 50 feet, gravel, down-sloping). The pilot stated that he leaned the mixture for altitude performance and added 20 degrees of flaps prior to the takeoff roll. "At mid-field the liftoff appeared normal" and the "airplane was beginning to become light on it's wheels and about to begin flying in ground effect." He said, "However, in the remaining 700 to 1,000 feet, at maximum acceleration, the aircraft appeared to be pushed back down to the ground. The pilot said he executed "emergency abort procedures which consisted of directing the aircraft toward bushes at the end of the runway to absorb the impact, pulling the fuel cut-off to stop the flow of fuel, and turning off the magnetos and ignition switch to reduce the chance of fire." The airplane impacted bushes and a fence at the departure end of the runway causing substantial damage to the wings, left main landing gear, and left horizontal stabilizer . The pilot reported no anomalies with the airplane or its systems. Recorded temperatures in the area, at the time of the accident, ranged from 70 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit (F) with dew points of 44 to 46 degrees F. According to the pilot, the temperature at the airport was 51 degrees F. Density altitude ranges were calculated to be from 10,000 to 12,200 feet. The pilot stated that there was 10 to 15 knots of tailwind during the takeoff. According to airport information, the runway is 3,200 feet in length and slopes down 50 feet. Forty foot trees are located at the end of the runway. Performance data showed a required takeoff distance of 3,200 to 3,300 feet on a paved runway, to clear a 50 foot obstacle at the end of the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper preflight planning, his inability to attain short field takeoff performance, and his intentional maneuvering of the airplane into bushes and a fence during the aborted takeoff. Factors contributing to the accident were the high density altitude and the tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07CA139
- Event ID
- 20070911X01364
- Case number
- DEN07CA139
- 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: d6d04335ab39e24bf4206636302256ece61afe3c1087780c27a4759c205c914c; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:30:28.110Z.