WPR09LA179 · Cessna 182
Cessna 182 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From Kalispell City Airport (S27) to Carson Field (MT53)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09LA179
- 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 182
- 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
- N6433A
- Operator
- Fred Sand
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kalispell City Airport (S27), Kalispell, MTTo Carson Field (MT53), Kalispell, MT
- 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 engine power (partial)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane used for the skydiving operation was equipped with a foot step just above the right wheel, which the skydivers used to launch from the airplane. As the last of four skydivers stepped on the foot step, the right main landing gear fell away. The pilot reported that after he flew around for about 1 1/2 hours to burn off fuel, he intended to perform a low pass over the runway before coming around to land. The carburetor heat was turned on during the descent and, as he applied power to go around at midfield, the engine sputtered and lost partial power. The airplane was about 20 feet above ground level and he was able to maintain that altitude past the runway end before landing off the runway surface on snowy terrain. The airplane subsequently nosed over and came to rest inverted, sustaining substantial damage to both wings and the empennage. The carburetor heat was found in the “off” position; however, the investigation did not determine if the pilot turned off the carburetor heat or if it was pushed in by impact forces. Examination of the main landing gear revealed a fracture originating at the forward upper surface spring. The fracture surface displayed features indicative of fatigue cracking; the depth of the cracking was approximately 0.11 inches. An examination of the engine and carburetor revealed no anomalies that could account for the loss of partial power. The meteorological conditions were not conducive to carburetor icing.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during a go-around for undetermined reasons. Contributing to the accident was a fatigue failure of the right main landing gear spring.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09LA179
- Event ID
- 20090406X12052
- Case number
- WPR09LA179
- 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: b5f4bd99063a1a1f8bafbad45f875536a67a14ee194c51adb57f367b52ac3dc3; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:54:14.651Z.