ERA09FA185 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Cobb County International Airport-McCollum Field (RYY) to 4A7 · Hampton, GA
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09FA185
- 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
- 3 · 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
- Instrument 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
- N1913M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cobb County International Airport-McCollum Field (RYY), Kennesaw, GATo 4A7 · Hampton, GA
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument-rated pilot and two passengers departed under visual meteorological conditions and encountered instrument meteorological conditions while en route to their destination. A witness near the accident site stated she heard a "whining high speed sound" followed by a "thud." She noticed water splashing up from a lake, into the air, which was followed by silence. The airplane crashed into a private lake, and was located at a depth of approximately 16 feet and heavily fragmented, consistent with a high speed impact. Subsequent examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any preimpact abnormalities. The pilot did not obtain a weather briefing prior to the flight. A witness near the accident site described the weather conditions at the time of the accident as "low cloud cover" with fog drifting across the surface of the lake, and "misty overcast." Another witness stated that conditions were "very foggy." The pilot had accumulated about 168 hours of total flight experience, which included about 70 hours as pilot-in-command, and 3.2 hours logged as "simulated instrument," and 0 hours logged in "actual instrument" meteorological conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to continue visual flight rules flight into an area of reduced visibility weather conditions, which resulted in disorientation and subsequent loss of aircraft control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09FA185
- Event ID
- 20090308X13450
- Case number
- ERA09FA185
- 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: 7f59e87b185a4e70ca7a161c8caf0b8a5117f5b71f8d57b930da89f7bad84e1f; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:58:49.612Z.