ANC08CA044 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Lake Hood Airport (Z41) to Fairbanks, AK
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location and departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC08CA044
- 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
- N180JP
- Operator
- Conor P. McManamin · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Lake Hood Airport (Z41), Anchorage, AKTo Fairbanks, AK
- 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 · VFR go-around
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
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 of the wheel-ski equipped airplane related that he was attempting to land to the east with a variable wind, gusting from 15 to 35 knots. He elected to do a go-around as he approached touchdown due to a strong gust of wind from the south which altered the desired landing path. During the go-around, the pilot said the airplane's left main landing gear struck a parked and unoccupied truck on the side of the runway. The impact knocked the left main landing gear out of the gear box, and when the airplane landed, the left main landing gear collapsed. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and left wing lift strut. The pilot indicated that there were no preaccident mechanical problems with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control and inadequate compensation for wind conditions during a go-around. Contributing to the accident were wind gusts and a crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC08CA044
- Event ID
- 20080415X00486
- Case number
- ANC08CA044
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-03-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9dc2dfb0773505e20cda01223c2721292db73c9dc286bd8cb8d415aff30aa9d6; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:32:22.375Z.