GAA15CA275 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Sunrise Skypark Airport (ID40) to Big Creek Airport (U60)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA275
- 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 180
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N4673A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sunrise Skypark Airport (ID40), Marsing, IDTo Big Creek Airport (U60), McCall, ID
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1956)
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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
The pilot of the tailwheel-equipped airplane reported that he planned to land at a mountain airport that is situated in a valley. He overflew the airport and observed the windsock, which indicated the wind was out the north and then entered the left downwind for runway 19, which has an uphill slope. While on downwind, the airport became obscured by terrain, and then became visible again at the end of the base leg. The pilot reported that when he turned final, he saw that he was high, reduced engine power to idle and increased the flap setting to 40 degrees. The airplane touched down at a higher than normal airspeed and bounced once. The pilot applied the brakes and the airplane nosed over. The pilot reported he estimated there was 150 yards of runway remaining from where the airplane came to rest, the usable runway is 3,550 feet long. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing, right wing strut, rudder, vertical stabilizer.
The Airport Facilities Directory (AFD) recommends landing to the south and taking off to the north when wind allows. The pilot reported that he estimated he landed with a 10 to 15 knot tailwind. The pilot stated that he should have gone around, but believed he could stop on the remaining runway due to the uphill slope. The pilot also reported that he should have flown a stabilized approach and immediately gone around when he saw he was too high on final to safely land.
The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive application of brake pressure during the landing roll, which resulted in a nose over. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to continue the landing after noting he was high on final approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15CA275
- Event ID
- 20150925X24308
- Case number
- GAA15CA275
- 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: decd7e02841f0c215d0e983fecb416135ea221c23268a577732a0c1f0fd9bdac; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:49:17.022Z.