CEN15LA403 · Cessna 182 P
Cessna 182 P · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Alpine Airpark (46U) to Alpine Airpark (46U)
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
- CEN15LA403
- 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 P
- 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
- XBYUH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Alpine Airpark (46U), Alpine, WYTo Alpine Airpark (46U), Alpine, WY
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, during a preflight briefing, he and the pilot-rated passenger (who was the owner of the airplane) agreed that in the case of an emergency, the owner would take control of the airplane. After takeoff, the sightseeing flight was normal until the airplane approached a glacier at 12,000 ft mean sea level. The pilot stated that because the airplane engine was normally aspirated, there was not much power left to climb, but everything was "ok." As the airplane entered the glacier area through a canyon, it encountered a sudden downdraft and started to descend; the pilot recalled that the airplane's altitude above terrain was about 500 ft. The pilot tried to maintain a level attitude, but the airspeed began to decrease as the airplane continued to descend. The pilot-rated passenger then took control of the airplane and immediately lowered the nose to increase airspeed and set up for an emergency landing; the airplane appeared to be stalling. The airplane landed hard on ice ditches, separating the nose gear. The main landing gear dug in and the airplane came to a stop, which resulted in structural damage to the fuselage. No mechanical malfunctions or failures were reported by the pilot. Because the engine was normally aspirated, the performance of the engine was reduced at a high altitude. Further, the airplane was about 500 ft above terrain when the downdraft occurred. Considering that downdrafts in high mountainous terrain can exceed 1,000 ft per minute, the pilot did not maintain adequate altitude for the operating environment.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate altitude while operating over high mountainous terrain, which resulted in an emergency landing after the airplane's encounter with a downdraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA403
- Event ID
- 20150909X33413
- Case number
- CEN15LA403
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 65a737e3177977ac35f97373de8e78325816968fcd883311959a3e85af8bddc9; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:45:43.000Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure, destination. 46U is Alpine Airpark in Alpine, Wyoming; another record in this same release (GAA15CA255) labels 46U as ALPINE, WY, and there is no Alpine, Colorado airport with that identifier. 46U is Alpine Airpark in Alpine, Wyoming; another record in this same release (GAA15CA255) labels 46U as ALPINE, WY, and there is no Alpine, Colorado airport with that identifier.