LAX08LA140 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: hard landing
From Santa Maria Public Airport Captain G Allan Hancock Field (SMX) to Santa Maria Public Airport Captain G Allan Hancock Field (SMX)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA140
- 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
- N4660K
- Operator
- Gregory S. Anderson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Maria Public Airport Captain G Allan Hancock Field (SMX), Santa Maria, CATo Santa Maria Public Airport Captain G Allan Hancock Field (SMX), Santa Maria, CA
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Personnel issues › Physical
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After returning from a 55-minute local area flight, the airplane touched down on the main landing gear and bounced repeatedly until the nose landing gear collapsed. Results of breath alcohol testing performed after the accident suggested that the pilot’s blood alcohol content was likely near 0.30 percent at the time of takeoff. A review of the pilot's medical records maintained by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) indicated that the pilot had admitted to a prior DUI with driver's license suspension that occurred on August 21, 2006, and that the FAA had taken no action in response to the reported DUI. The pilot did not provide, and the FAA did not request, the arrest report from that DUI. That report, obtained by the NTSB, indicated a blood alcohol content of 0.10 and the possession of cocaine at the time of the 2006 arrest. Inspection of the airplane found that the engine firewall was wrinkled and the fuselage structure around the nose landing gear was damaged.
Probable cause
The pilot's impairment from alcohol and his improper flare, which resulted in a bounced landing. Contributing to the accident was the FAA's failure to obtain additional information about the pilot's alcohol use history to verify that he met the requirements and standards for medical certification.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA140
- Event ID
- 20080602X00763
- Case number
- LAX08LA140
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-05-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 98c8485e3ff4c562a5d4f584fb0676a771015f347baebfdb17a274fe926b5ce2; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:42:31.279Z.