CEN13FA269 · Cessna 182T
Spinks Flight Center Cessna 182T · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Fort Worth Spinks Airport (FWS) to Gillespie County Airport (T82)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA269
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 182T
- 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
- N6197H
- Operator
- Spinks Flight Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Worth Spinks Airport (FWS), Fort Worth, TXTo Gillespie County Airport (T82), Fredericksburg, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2012)
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot obtained an abbreviated weather briefing and departed on a cross-country flight. While en route, an air traffic controller queried the pilot if he had the current weather information for his destination airport. The pilot acknowledged that he did. The pilot then requested vectors for a VOR DME-A instrument approach, but the controller was unable to give vectors and cleared the pilot direct to the initial approach fix (the VOR). The controller then informed the pilot that he was "constantly" 300-400 feet below his assigned altitude and reissued the local altimeter setting before clearing him for the approach. About a minute later, the pilot canceled his instrument flight rules (IFR) flight plan when he was about 3-4 miles north of the VOR. The controller acknowledged the cancellation and approved a frequency change. There were no further communications or transmissions between the pilot and air traffic control.
A review of radar data revealed that the airplane traveled on a southerly heading toward the VOR. An airport employee heard the pilot announce over the UNICOM frequency that he was crossing over the VOR and transitioning from IFR to visual flight rules flight; however, the weather at the airport was reported to be 1.5 miles visibility. A witness saw the airplane flying very slowly toward the airport about 200 feet above the ground when the engine suddenly stopped. The witness lost sight of the airplane but did see a plume of black smoke a few moments later. The airplane impacted terrain about 1 mile east-southeast of the airport in a nose-low attitude, consistent with a stall/spin. Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine found no preaccident mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Although a witness reported that the engine stopped, there was no evidence during postaccident examinations corroborating this. It is likely that the pilot, during his transition from instrument to visual flight while still in instrument conditions, did not ensure that the airplane maintained adequate airspeed.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed while transitioning from instrument to visual flight while still in instrument conditions, which resulted in an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA269
- Event ID
- 20130509X70449
- Case number
- CEN13FA269
- 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: 71038ff4e7809e03750ee77c88e4a3fadae154174650843e2f5e631ddf7f268a; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:56:37.680Z.