NYC08TA130 · Cessna 180
South Carolina Forest Commission Cessna 180 · Accident: aircraft wake turbulence encounter during landing
From Spartanburg Downtown Memorial Airport (SPA) to Spartanburg Downtown Memorial Airport (SPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08TA130
- 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 180
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N1044Y
- Operator
- South Carolina Forest Commission
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spartanburg Downtown Memorial Airport (SPA), Spartanburg, SCTo Spartanburg Downtown Memorial Airport (SPA)
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Aircraft wake turbulence encounter
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After joining the downwind traffic pattern leg for landing on a 5,202-foot-long runway, the pilot of a Cessna 180 observed a Lear 45 taxi on to the runway for departure. As he turned the airplane on to the left base leg, he noticed that the Learjet was still on the runway. After joining the final approach leg, the Learjet started the takeoff roll and lifted off. As the pilot flared for touchdown, the accident airplane was "pushed hard" to the right, the right main landing gear touched down, then the airplane bounced and "threw to the left hard." The left wing then made ground contact, was substantially damaged, and the airplane ground-looped. According to the Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM), pilots should adjust their operations and flight path as necessary to preclude serious wake encounters. When landing behind a departing larger aircraft on the same runway, they should note where the larger aircraft's rotation point was and land well before the rotation point. The AIM also states that the flight disciplines necessary to ensure vortex avoidance during visual flight rules operations must be exercised by the pilot. Vortex visualization and avoidance procedures should be exercised by the pilot using the same degree of concern as in collision avoidance and that wake turbulence may be encountered by aircraft in flight as well as when operating on the airport movement area.
Probable cause
The pilot's encounter with wake turbulence during approach as a result of his inadequate in-flight planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08TA130
- Event ID
- 20080325X00384
- Case number
- NYC08TA130
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 0b140c8ea427663a5f9eee7f4b9a245a7e497884dbe018c23a7bfd5c8dbf49f1; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:27:52.336Z.