CEN14CA289 · Cessna 182A
Fly Free Skydiving Cessna 182A · Accident while maneuvering
From FES · Festus, MO to FES · Festus, MO
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14CA289
- 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 182A
- 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
- N5172D
- Operator
- Fly Free Skydiving
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FES · Festus, MOTo FES · Festus, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1958)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot's report, he leveled the airplane about 11,000 feet and established a speed of 80 mph with 10 degrees of flaps extended. When the last skydiver exited the airplane, its nose pitched up. The pilot pushed forwarded on the control wheel and added full engine power. He experienced "difficulties" in pushing the control wheel forward and thought a parachute caused the control issue. The pilot subsequently used full nose down trim to assist his control of the airplane. A witness in a chase airplane confirmed the bent right horizontal stabilizer. The pilot assessed the deteriorating flight control situation. He decided to jump out of the airplane over farmland and use his emergency parachute there. The pilot observed the accident airplane spiral down as he descended under his parachute. A skydiver reported there were no mechanical malfunctions up to the time he exited and the last skydiver confirmed that his reserve canopy had deployed prematurely as he was leaving the step. The pilot reported no other mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The inadvertent deployment of the skydiver'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 CEN14CA289
- Event ID
- 20140616X13356
- Case number
- CEN14CA289
- 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: 9ad72740fbadceac622fce2cc1ec1aa9182f147f50582e619b24fbe550fea89b; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:05:19.558Z.