CEN16LA138 · Cessna 180D
Cessna 180D · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Durango La Plata County Airport (DRO) to Shiprock Airstrip (5V5)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA138
- 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 180D
- 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
- N180XV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Durango La Plata County Airport (DRO), Durango, COTo Shiprock Airstrip (5V5), Shiprock, NM
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1961)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 on ground
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight. The pilot reported that, during the landing roll, shortly after he had completed a three-point landing, a left quartering tailwind gust caused the tailwheel-equipped airplane to veer to the right. The pilot was unable to regain directional control before the airplane departed the right side of the runway into a drainage ditch. The right main landing gear collapsed during the runway excursion, and the airplane subsequently nosed over. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot stated that, about 25 minutes before landing, he obtained the current weather conditions from the closest aviation weather station, which was located about 23 miles from the destination airport, and that the reported surface wind was from 200 degrees at 4 knots. A postaccident review of available weather data established that the surface wind was likely variable in direction at 5 knots. Although the surface wind was considered light and variable, a sudden change in wind direction shortly after touchdown likely contributed to the pilot's loss of directional control during the landing roll.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control after encountering a sudden change in wind direction during the landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA138
- Event ID
- 20160331X73343
- Case number
- CEN16LA138
- 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: a4a4296000ead22a1322c460723672a3b6ab957ac349e66796a41cdb33dafd1c; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:15:54.986Z.