WPR13CA428 · Cessna 182Q Q
Cessna 182Q Q · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Fullerton Municipal Airport (KFUL) to Big Bear City Airport (L35)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13CA428
- 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 182Q Q
- 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
- N759UP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fullerton Municipal Airport (KFUL), Fullerton, CATo Big Bear City Airport (L35), Big Bear, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1978)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
After an uneventful departure, climb, and cruise, the pilot performed a standard 45-degree entry into the traffic pattern at the high elevation airport. The airplane descended low during the final approach, and the pilot applied full forward throttle control. The engine responded; however, the descent was not arrested as he expected. The nose wheel then struck the airport perimeter fence, and the airplane came to rest against the side of the runway. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the firewall, lower fuselage, and right wing during the accident sequence. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation. The calculated density altitude for the runway elevation at the time of the accident was about 8,000 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain a stabilized landing approach, which resulted in a collision with a fence short of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13CA428
- Event ID
- 20130928X54829
- Case number
- WPR13CA428
- 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: 357f13dbc6b528a737b231b7a929fbd800fb53b0e70fbb575c04ee2aa7db6ec1; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:55:25.822Z.