ERA09CA449 · Cessna 182 R
Tab Air Cessna 182 R · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Myer Airport (6PA0) to Cattaraugus County-Olean Airport (OLE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA449
- 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 R
- 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
- N9432X
- Operator
- Tab Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Myer Airport (6PA0), Milford, PATo Cattaraugus County-Olean Airport (OLE), Olean, NY
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 on ground
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Task performance
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 was taking off from a 2,500-foot long by 50-foot wide turf runway, oriented on a northerly heading, when the airplane "became airborne early due to a dip in the runway." According to the pilot, he experienced a "slight left crosswind" and "engine torque," and the airplane began drifting to the left. The left wingtip impacted a tree, and the airplane came to rest in trees on the left side of the runway. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing. Neither the pilot nor a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector, who examined the airplane after the accident, reported any pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or anomalies. Details regarding the pilot's experience operating on turf runways, and particularly the accident airport, could not be obtained despite numerous attempts. In the NTSB Pilot/Operator Accident Report Form, the pilot reported the accident airport's runway width as 50 feet. This was confirmed by analysis of aerial photographs of the airport, which also depicted the distance between trees on either side of the runway as varying between 77 feet and 56 feet. However, records maintained by the FAA listed the runway as 200 feet wide. The nearest weather reporting station, located approximately 16 nautical miles southeast of the accident location, reported winds from 280 degrees at 7 knots around the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA449
- Event ID
- 20090809X02721
- Case number
- ERA09CA449
- 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: 4d00e0a8cff0349940260373b3344556782895bf8014173dec91dabb9eafaeae; retrieved 2026-09-15T12:46:13.531Z.