CEN12LA060 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: electrical system malfunction/failure en route
From Chippewa Valley Regional Airport (EAU) to Crystal Airport (MIC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA060
- 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
- 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
- N3606C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chippewa Valley Regional Airport (EAU), Eau Claire, WITo Crystal Airport (MIC), Minneapolis, MN
- 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
- Electrical system malfunction/failure
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a personal sightseeing flight, the pilot landed the airplane at a controlled airport without contacting the control tower. According to the manager of a fixed base operation at the controlled airport, the pilot asked what airport he had landed at and seemed unsure of the direction toward his intended destination. Although the manager reminded him to do so, the pilot did not contact the control tower during his departure. While en route, it became dark, and the airplane experienced a loss of electrical power, rendering the cockpit "virtually black." Although the sky was clear and the visibility was 10 miles, the pilot was unable to locate a diversion airport after an hour of searching. He elected to land on a road, and the airplane collided with a pole. The pilot reported that he lost directional control during the landing roll. A postaccident examination revealed that the airplane’s battery had a low power state. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions other than the loss of electrical power.
Probable cause
The pilot’s disorientation during a night flight, which resulted in an off-airport landing, and his inadequate directional control during the landing roll. Contributing to the accident was the loss of the airplane’s electrical system power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA060
- Event ID
- 20111111X25837
- Case number
- CEN12LA060
- 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 2011-11-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bd270f4ebaff775f2ebaa838d76cfd804c879449fdaf341dc42dee5a24f1ef76; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:55:40.564Z.