WPR10LA059 · Cessna 182K
Cessna 182K · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Susanville Municipal Airport (KSVE) to Lodi Airport (K1O3)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA059
- 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
- 1 · 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 182K
- 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
- N2650R
- Operator
- Gartner Harold H III · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Susanville Municipal Airport (KSVE), Susanville, CATo Lodi Airport (K1O3), Lodi, CA
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument-rated pilot of the single-engine airplane received his instrument flight rules clearance for a southeast departure and took off with 1/2-mile visibility and light snow falling. About the time the airplane departed witnesses heard an airplane circling overhead, making a number of passes 2 miles to the northeast of the airport, and then heard the airplane impact the ground and saw a fireball. The circling flight path is consistent with the pilot's known departure habits of circling over the airport to gain sufficient altitude to clear the mountainous terrain surrounding the airport. The witnesses did not see the airplane before it impacted the ground because of the snow and low visibility at the time. The pilot was instructed in his clearance to contact the air traffic control (ATC) center after departure, but ATC center personnel reported that they never received a check-in radio call from the pilot. The weather at the airport about the time of the accident included winds from 140 degrees at 6 knots gusting to 15 knots, 1/2-mile visibility with a 200-foot overcast ceiling, and an outside air temperature of 1 degree Celsius. The wreckage of the entire airplane was contained in the vicinity of the initial ground impact and no ground scars or debris were found leading up to the wreckage. Examination of the airplane's wings showed leading edge crushing along the entire length of both wings, and the wing skin was crushed accordion-style longitudinally, all consistent with a stall and vertical descent to impact. Accumulation of ice on the airplane in flight could have inhibited radio communications and created unusual airplane stall characteristics conducive to a stall/spin.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to takeoff into weather conditions conducive to ice accumulation, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin while maneuvering in the initial climb. Contributing to the accident was the likely accumulation of snow and ice on the airborne airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA059
- Event ID
- 20091121X54345
- Case number
- WPR10LA059
- 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: a0652d66da587454152313270557abbe46ed5e8b6e41ad50da387c161efc2b0e; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:34:27.219Z.