ERA14LA072 · Cessna 182T
Civil Air Patrol Cessna 182T · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Burlington Alamance Regional Airport (BUY) to Burlington Alamance Regional Airport (BUY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA072
- 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 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
- N963CP
- Operator
- Civil Air Patrol
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Burlington Alamance Regional Airport (BUY), Burlington, NCTo Burlington Alamance Regional Airport (BUY), Burlington, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2007)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was practicing night takeoffs and landings. He completed two takeoffs and landings without incident; however, during the third takeoff, as the airplane was climbing to between about 10 and 20 ft above ground level, it stopped climbing, and the pilot felt increased resistance on the elevator control. The airplane did not respond to elevator control inputs, and it subsequently pitched nose down and descended. The airplane touched down before departing the left side of the runway. The nose gear collapsed, and the airplane sustained substantial damage to the firewall and nose section.
The pilot reported that the airplane had a recent history of elevator trim issues, which included difficulty controlling the elevator. The elevator trim jackscrew had been removed, inspected, and reinstalled about 1 week before the accident, and the airplane had since been operated about 7 hours. Examination of the airplane, including the elevator control system, did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation; however, impact damage precluded the ability to conduct a complete functional check of the elevator control system.
Probable cause
A loss of airplane control during takeoff for reasons that could not be determined due to the postaccident condition of the elevator control system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA072
- Event ID
- 20131217X25210
- Case number
- ERA14LA072
- 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 2013-12-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ef07e605e4c0477275f28cf76f99da6b215820356b9c08bb47043e3732ee3ee6; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:11:32.591Z.