ERA12CA024 · Cessna 182A
Skydive Maple Grove Cessna 182A · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft en route
From Warrenton Air Park (7VG0) to Warrenton Air Park (7VG0)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA024
- 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
- N6324B
- Operator
- Skydive Maple Grove
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warrenton Air Park (7VG0), Warrenton, VATo Warrenton Air Park (7VG0), Warrenton, VA
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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 structures
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he was descending the airplane from an altitude of 8,000 feet after releasing skydivers. During the descent, at an altitude of about 3,000 feet, the airplane's door opened and contacted the underside of the wing. The pilot slowed the airplane and attempted to close the door but noticed that the door had warped and that the window was missing. A postflight examination of the airplane revealed that the window had separated from the door in flight and contacted the right horizontal stabilizer, resulting in substantial damage. The door had been modified with a top hinge for skydiving operations and was closed by means of two pin-type latches that were inserted into holes located on both the forward and aft sides of the door frame. The aft pin hole was torn, indicative of its latch pin having been inserted at the time of the door opening; however, the forward pin hole exhibited no damage.
Probable cause
The pilot did not ensure that the forward door latch was secured prior to initiating the descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA024
- Event ID
- 20111013X44337
- Case number
- ERA12CA024
- 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: 771a6e1620c97f075a55c1b83c4409d04d77c032f1a1252328f90d7f09419150; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:50:28.865Z.