WPR12LA418 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Nampa Municipal Airport (MAN) to Nampa Municipal Airport (MAN)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA418
- 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
- N90RW
- Operator
- Brian Anderson
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nampa Municipal Airport (MAN), Nampa, IDTo Nampa Municipal Airport (MAN), Nampa, ID
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot receiving instruction reported that after he conducted a thorough preflight inspection, he and the flight instructor briefed a soft field takeoff; the pilot lowered the flaps to 20 degrees, positioned the airplane onto the runway, and started to take off. During the initial climb, when the airplane was about 30 feet above the ground, the pilot noticed that the airplane had a slight bank to the right. He glanced at the airspeed indicator, and he believed it read either 70 or 90 mph. He attempted to correct for the right bank; however, the airplane did not respond. The instructor took over the flight controls and immediately added full left rudder and aileron. The airplane initially started to bank toward the left before it rolled into a steep right bank of about 60 degrees and impacted terrain. Witnesses reported that the airplane appeared to be climbing normally, and then it seemed to “sink” and slow; the right wing lowered about 10 degrees before it dropped another 50 degrees, and subsequently impacted terrain. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed no anomalies with the airframe that would have precluded normal operations. The reason for the uncommanded bank could not be determined.
Probable cause
An uncommanded bank after takeoff followed by an aerodynamic stall. The reason for the uncommanded bank could not be determined because postaccident examination did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA418
- Event ID
- 20120914X33512
- Case number
- WPR12LA418
- 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 2012-09-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 79d4b064f7c613434b1be739b687884bdee7ba5ef06e772f619a4e71740b95f3; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:52:02.451Z.