ERA11CA024 · Cessna 180 K
Cessna 180 K · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during landing
From Sidney, ME to Summner, ME
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location and departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11CA024
- 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 180 K
- 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
- N2576K
- Operator
- Clinton Goodhue
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Sidney, METo Summner, ME
- 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
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
According to the pilot, while the airplane was on final approach at the destination airport, it encountered a downdraft and he was unable to arrest the descent rate, even with full power. A witness stated that the wind at the airport at the time of the accident was 8-10 knots. The nearest weather reporting station also reported that the wind was from 360 degrees at 6 knots. Another witness also reported that the pilot of the accident airplane would usually approach at a slow approach speed for landing. Review of a video recording that was made at the airport on the day of the accident also confirmed that there was little or no wind present during the accident, and that the airplane appeared to approach the runway at a slower airspeed than similar airplanes. Further review of the video also revealed that, while on short final, the airplane had developed a high sink rate and rapidly rolled to the right just prior to impact with the turf runway. No sound of an increase of engine power was recorded until just prior to ground contact. During an interview, the pilot stated there were no mechanical malfunctions with the airplane. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that during the accident the airplane incurred substantial structural damage to the landing gear assembly bulkhead.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed while on final approach resulting in an aerodynamic stall and a subsequent hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11CA024
- Event ID
- 20101018X84634
- Case number
- ERA11CA024
- 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: c6a30332973b85f86f5f340253bd7c8495154f648573a7fa4ac58777df060e16; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:29:22.432Z.