NYC08CA276 · Cessna A188B
Cessna A188B · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) during initial climb
From Fort White, FL (no airport) to Amistad North Heliport (FD40)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08CA276
- 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 A188B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- N4494Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort White, FL (no airport)To Amistad North Heliport (FD40), Gardner, FL
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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 › Action/decision
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 Cessna A188B, departed from a private grass field with approximately 100 gallons of agricultural chemicals on board for an aerial application flight. He stated that on departure he "did not pull up fast enough" and felt a "jolt" when the right main landing gear impacted a 4-foot-high gate post, later discovering that the landing gear had been sheared. He then pressed on the brake pedals to see if his brakes were operational; however, there was no pressure and "the pedal went to the floor." He applied his chemical load to the field in order to decrease his landing weight and then flew to an airport with a longer runway, assuming he had no brakes. Immediately after the airplane touched down it "broke to the right," and impacted a fence damaging the wing spar. The pilot did not report experiencing any mechanical malfunctions with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudged distance/altitude during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08CA276
- Event ID
- 20080913X01445
- Case number
- NYC08CA276
- 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, 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: 2959d088bba6d8747cd630d65df16c78750e0a7f72d241e2bbc944baad6d7309; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:12:18.025Z.