ERA15LA300 · Cessna 182 Q
Cessna 182 Q · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure during initial climb
From Ingalls Field (HSP) to Lonesome Pine Airport (LNP)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA300
- 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 182 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
- N7506S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ingalls Field (HSP), Hot Springs, VATo Lonesome Pine Airport (LNP), Wise, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-pilot-rated passenger had recently purchased the airplane, which had not been flown in the previous 6 years and did not have a current annual inspection. He and his brother, a private pilot, were returning the airplane to their home airport. During the initial climb after takeoff, about 100 ft above ground level, the engine rpm "dropped"; the pilot landed on the remaining runway but was unable to stop the airplane before it departed the end of the runway and nosed over.
A postaccident examination revealed that the right magneto did not produce spark. It is likely that the magneto failed during the takeoff, resulting in the loss of engine power. The pilot reported that fuel sampled from the right wing tank before the accident flight had a green tint and postaccident photographs showed green staining on the right side fuselage consistent with a leak from the right wing. The source of the green tint was not determined; however, it likely did not affect engine operation since the fuel selector was set to the left fuel tank, which did not have any evidence of green-tinted fuel, and no green tint was observed in the fuel strainer.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during initial climb due to the failure of a magneto. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to operate the airplane without a current annual inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA300
- Event ID
- 20150810X41947
- Case number
- ERA15LA300
- 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: 56d02f444ed7722825a77b97f60be0966b0249dcb10dc61d752eeb1f070b7aba; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:38:42.446Z.