WPR11CA309 · Cessna 182A
Sky Signs Cessna 182A · Accident: hard landing
From Pearson Field (KVUO) to Pearson Field (KVUO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11CA309
- 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 182A
- 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
- N5175D
- Operator
- Sky Signs
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pearson Field (KVUO), Vancouver, WATo Pearson Field (KVUO), Vancouver, WA
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The banner tow pilot reported that he approached the banner tow pickup point to catch the rope with his tail hook. Shortly after his initial pitch up maneuver to hook the rope, the pilot observed through a small mirror that the rope was not attached to his tail hook. Subsequently the banner lifted off the ground and the pilot could see that the banner rope looked like it was resting on or around his right horizontal stabilizer. Photos taken of the airplane in the air by a witness prior to the accident show the tow rope hooked around the nose gear and looped over the right horizontal stabilizer. Unable to release the banner, the pilot returned to land on the grassy area next to the runway as he was concerned that the banner might get snagged on obstacles located around the runway. As the pilot began his landing approach at approximately a 300 foot per minute descent and was crossing the west end of the runway, he brought the throttle to idle, added full flaps, and tried to maintain 60 mph. As the airplane descended the banner contacted the ground resulting in a significant amount of drag to the airplane. According to the pilot the airspeed began to drop and he attempted to maintain it by further lowering the nose. The airplane contacted the ground hard and the firewall sustained substantial damage. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe and engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly engage the banner tow rope with the airplane's tail hook.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11CA309
- Event ID
- 20110705X44902
- Case number
- WPR11CA309
- 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 2011-07-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a5b6014ffde0dc85d97796c4ad175604d5c60005b9afd66f90680e3487380137; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:23:43.600Z.