CEN10LA427 · Cessna 180 J
Southern Aviation Cessna 180 J · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Southern Seaplane Airport (65LA) to Southern Seaplane Airport (65LA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA427
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 180 J
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N7812K
- Operator
- Southern Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southern Seaplane Airport (65LA), Belle Chase, LATo Southern Seaplane Airport (65LA), Belle Chase, LA
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor was preparing another pilot for an add-on rating in a seaplane. The pilot receiving instruction was flying the airplane and making a water landing to a bayou. The instructor had his hands in front of the control yoke to prevent the nose from going forward when the seaplane touched down. The seaplane touched down on the water slightly nose forward and flat and decelerated rapidly. Neither the instructor nor the pilot used a gentle back pressure on the elevator control to compensate for the tendency for the nose to drop, and they did not close the throttle in order to maintain the touchdown attitude until the seaplane came off the step (settled into a plowing attitude in the water). The instructor stated that he could not remember if the control yoke hit his hands but that he applied aft pressure on the control yoke as the seaplane flipped over slowly and became inverted and partially submerged. Postaccident examination of the seaplane revealed no preimpact mechanical failures that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper application of the flight controls and throttle during landing, which resulted in a nose over and subsequent inverted immersion in the water. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor’s delayed remedial action and inadequate supervision of the pilot receiving instruction.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA427
- Event ID
- 20100724X41324
- Case number
- CEN10LA427
- 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: 52896bc117f4b971c13becb2fa01d50add661595865ae217d639ab569499bea7; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:57:38.896Z.