WPR11FA304 · Cessna 180D
Cessna 180D · Accident: low altitude operation/event en route
From Santa Paula Airport (SZP) to Santa Paula Airport (SZP)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11FA304
- 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
- 2 · 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 180D
- 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
- N6451X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Paula Airport (SZP), Santa Paula, CATo Santa Paula Airport (SZP), Santa Paula, 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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
- Pole
- 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 › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A pilot-rated witness reported observing the accident airplane conduct a series of touch-and-go landings at the airport before it left the airport traffic pattern. The witness stated that the airplane ascended to an altitude of about 100 feet above ground level and traveled in a westerly heading toward a nearby river. The witness further reported that the engine sounded normal and the airplane never appeared to climb higher. A second witness located near the accident site reported hearing the sound of an airplane for a few seconds before the sound suddenly stopped, and the witness then observed a fire within the nearby river bed. Examination of the accident site revealed that the airplane struck an unmarked telephone line about 85 feet above the ground while traveling in a westerly direction. The recorded sunset was about 9 minutes prior to the time of the accident, and the end of civil twilight was about 21 minutes later. It is likely that due to the dusk lighting conditions at the time of the accident, the pilot could not see the telephone line. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from a telephone line while flying at a low altitude in dusk lighting conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11FA304
- Event ID
- 20110704X30339
- Case number
- WPR11FA304
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2011-07-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0abcf8db7f00e751999f331abb3e98af5a0410884eaa594c86950724e31a82a5; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:31:55.891Z.