ERA11FA412 · Cessna 182S
Cessna 182S · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Key Field / Meridian Regional Airport (MEI) to Harnett Regional Jetport Airport (HRJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11FA412
- 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 182S
- 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
- N23739
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Key Field / Meridian Regional Airport (MEI), Meridian, MSTo Harnett Regional Jetport Airport (HRJ), Erwin, NC
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 20 minutes after departing on a visual flight rules cross-country flight, the pilot ceased responding to air traffic controllers after being advised to contact the next air traffic control facility. Controllers continued to track the airplane as it flew toward the stated destination airport and then turned toward the airport adjacent to the accident site. The airplane arrived in the vicinity of the airport nearly 1 hour after the end of civil twilight and began maneuvering in the vicinity of the approach end of one of the runways. After performing two 180-degree turns, the airplane entered a steep, descending right turn toward the runway's final approach course. The airplane impacted trees about 1/2 mile from the runway threshold, and the wreckage path roughly aligned with the runway's final approach course. Examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures. The airplane's audio panel microphone selector was found set to a position that would not have allowed the pilot to communicate with controllers or to activate the airport's pilot-controlled runway lighting. A pilot who flew into the airport later that night described that area as a very disorienting "black hole" due to the lack of ground lighting at night.
The maneuvering observed as the airplane arrived in the vicinity of the airport suggested that the pilot may have been attempting to activate the airport's pilot-controlled lighting and locate the runway. The pilot was likely unable to activate the lighting due to an inadvertent misconfiguration of the audio panel earlier in the flight. After flying through the final approach course twice, the pilot may have elected to attempt to locate the unlit runway using the airplane's landing light, the airplane's onboard global positioning system receivers, and/or the airport's precision approach path indicator lights as a guide. However, as he turned the airplane toward the dark area located southwest of the runway threshold, he likely experienced spatial disorientation, lost awareness of the airplane's attitude, and allowed it to enter a right descending spiral, which continued to impact.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of control due to spatial disorientation while maneuvering in dark night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11FA412
- Event ID
- 20110721X63616
- Case number
- ERA11FA412
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2011-07-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b863b10ff57cc77e90ca9e5630f6e9bb2868f568f878f83ba62715dba7743985; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:36:29.725Z.