WPR15CA047 · Cessna 182Q
Cessna 182Q · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Shafter Airport - Minter Field (MIT) to San Luis Obispo, CA (no airport)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15CA047
- 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
- 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
- N97347
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shafter Airport - Minter Field (MIT), Shafter, CATo San Luis Obispo, CA (no airport)
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1979)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 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 10/9/2015. Please see the public docket for this accident to view the changes made to the original report.**
The pilot of the airplane departed from a dirt airstrip in mountainous terrain earlier during the day, and was preparing to land at another mountain dirt airstrip. He reported that the wind was about 7 to 10 knots, and that he was flying a stabilized approach during the downwind, base, and final segments. As he initiated the landing flare, the wind changed to a right crosswind, and the right wing lifted. He was unable to keep the airplane on the runway centerline, and the airplane descended down an embankment into an adjacent creek. The airplane came to rest nose down in the creek bed, sustaining substantial damage to the firewall and forward fuselage. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airplane control during the landing flare with a crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15CA047
- Event ID
- 20141125X14315
- Case number
- WPR15CA047
- 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: 5798380942b92024caf1dd81d5e5b8aec76839f2aa2f9c71ad509dcf86a88793; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:56:50.148Z.