CEN13LA170 · Cessna 195
Cessna 195 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) while taxiing
From Austin Executive Airport (EDC) to Gillespie County Airport (T82)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA170
- 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 195
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 195
- 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
- N4426C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Austin Executive Airport (EDC), Austin, TXTo Gillespie County Airport (T82), Fredericksburg, TX
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 reported that, as the airplane approached the end of the unlit taxiway, adjacent to the runway threshold, the right wing landing light failed, significantly reducing his forward visibility in the dark night conditions. The pilot cycled the right wing landing light switch as he applied wheel brakes; however, the light did not illuminate. The pilot stated that he was unable to stop the airplane before it departed the end of the taxiway and traveled down an embankment. The airplane overran the end of the taxiway despite the pilot's immediate application of brakes after the failure of the landing light, which is consistent with the pilot's use of an excessive taxi speed. Although the pilot did not recall seeing any reflective markers identifying the end of the taxiway, the end of the taxiway was identified by ground-level red reflectors, and the taxiway edges were identified by evenly spaced blue reflective posts. In response to the accident, the airport authority agreed to purchase additional blue reflective posts to more adequately mark the limits of the unlit taxiway. Additionally, the Federal Aviation Administration agreed to amend its Airport Facility Directory to reflect that the taxiway edges were marked by reflector posts and that the northwest end of runway 13-31 and parallel taxiway had a 16-foot descending embankment beginning at the end of the pavement.
Probable cause
The pilot's use of an excessive taxi speed, which resulted in the airplane overrunning the end of the unlit taxiway after the failure of the right wing landing light.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA170
- Event ID
- 20130220X12251
- Case number
- CEN13LA170
- 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 2013-02-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5e6d3c220fa79f951c2c9386fca89ac10b5375e03805c24e331f8829e1fcf403; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:58:14.387Z.