CEN09CA615 · Cessna 175
Shelton Drilling Cessna 175 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Sumers Airpark (KGWS) to Rio Blanco, CO (no airport)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA615
- 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 175
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N6686E
- Operator
- Shelton Drilling
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Sumers Airpark (KGWS), GlenwoodSprings, COTo Rio Blanco, CO (no airport)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was landing at a 2,100-foot-long dirt and turf remote mountain airstrip in dry conditions with clear skies and calm wind. During the flare and initial touchdown, the pilot allowed the airplane to drift to the left edge of the runway and the nose gear of the airplane struck a runway edge marker. According to the pilot, that impact "forcefully bounced the aircraft back in the air while dragging the tail." The airplane then "landed hard but controllably" on the left edge of the runway and the pilot steered the airplane back onto the runway. There was substantial damage to the forward fuselage and nose gear, but no injuries to the pilot.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing and his failure to execute a go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA615
- Event ID
- 20091022X84611
- Case number
- CEN09CA615
- 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: 324584db81074dc06ceac7382f3803995f2b876bd529d05dde8254fc9a4fa778; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:26:02.600Z.