CEN13LA541 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Portales Municipal Airport (PRZ) to Gallup Municipal Airport (GUP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA541
- 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
- N561AT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portales Municipal Airport (PRZ), Portales, NMTo Gallup Municipal Airport (GUP), Gallup, NM
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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 on ground
- 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 stated that he was landing the tailwheel-equipped airplane and that the landing roll was uneventful until he began retracting the wing flaps at a ground speed comparable to a "brisk walk." He reported that the airplane ground-looped after he inadvertently released left brake pressure while his attention was diverted with the mechanical flap handle. The pilot reported that although the airport's weather radio broadcast indicated a calm wind condition, there was a slight right crosswind during the landing. The pilot stated that the crosswind condition did not contribute to his loss of directional control during landing roll. Rather, the loss of control was due to his failure to follow his standard practice of bringing the airplane to a complete stop before completing any post-landing checklist items (including retracting the wing flaps). The pilot reported no preaccident malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airplane directional control during the landing roll due to his diverted attention.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA541
- Event ID
- 20130911X05138
- Case number
- CEN13LA541
- 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: 6d9a1d59682fcf6b57e48d78f2b9dffd160d711b8e1a88ca550ed9b76d619199; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:49:38.580Z.