ERA13CA247 · Cessna 182D
Cessna 182D · Accident en route
From Lufker Airport (49N) to Lufker Airport (49N)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13CA247
- 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 182D
- 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
- N8775X
- Operator
- 516-Skydive
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lufker Airport (49N), East Moriches, NYTo Lufker Airport (49N), East Moriches, NY
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
**This report was modified on 1/8/1014. Please see the public docket for this accident to view the original report.**
According to the pilot, he leveled the airplane at 8,500 feet for a tandem skydive. When the instructor exited the airplane, the nose pitched up, then the airplane pitched over into a right, descending turn. The pilot assessed the situation and determined that the right horizontal stabilizer was bent. He later determined that the instructor's drogue chute became trapped under the flap handle, resulting in a premature deployment of the parachute. The drogue chute then caught the horizontal stabilizer, resulting in a 45-degree downward bend. The pilot reported no pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The inadvertent deployment of the skydiving instructor's drogue chute when he exited the airplane, resulting in it contacting and damaging the horizontal stabilizer.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13CA247
- Event ID
- 20130520X30510
- Case number
- ERA13CA247
- 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, coordinates. 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: a4c6efcca4b171e218b4d4148b09bc27f00b85e8f8aaf892c334aaff2bb34697; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:36:47.951Z.