WPR16LA108 · Cessna 180 UNDESIGNAT
Cessna 180 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Shafter Airport - Minter Field (MIT) to California City Municipal Airport (L71)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16LA108
- 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 UNDESIGNAT
- 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
- N9370C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shafter Airport - Minter Field (MIT), Shafter, CATo California City Municipal Airport (L71), California City, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 61 years (built 1955)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The day before the accident, a satisfactory annual inspection was completed for the tailwheel-equipped airplane, and the owner/pilot conducted an uneventful flight later that day. The following day, he flew the airplane to another airport to obtain a cost estimate for some "cosmetic" maintenance. The flight was uneventful, but as the airplane touched down about 1315 local time on the desert airport runway, it bounced and then touched down again. On the second touchdown, the airplane veered sharply left, and the pilot was unable to regain directional control. The airplane nosed over onto its back when it exited the paved edge of the runway.
Detailed examination of the airplane did not reveal any mechanical reasons for the post-touchdown left swerve. However, the rudder travel stops were found to be set so that the rudder travel limits were 16° right and 13° left, instead of the manufacturer-specified value of 24° in each direction.
After that examination, the pilot reported that the "cosmetic" maintenance he was planning was to correct a top-to-bottom curvature (bow) in the rudder that resulted in an approximate 1.5-inch misalignment between the top and bottom of the rudder. According to the pilot, that bow was either a direct result of a 1974 accident or the consequent improper repair. Because the airplane had been operated uneventfully for 42 years with the deformed rudder, it is unlikely that this deformity caused the left veer. The airplane likely initially veered left due to an encounter with an atmospheric phenomenon common in desert environments on hot afternoons. These thermally induced air disturbances tend to be strong, highly localized, and short term but unpredictable and often undetectable. Thus, the pilot had no means to detect the air disturbance until he encountered it and then the improperly set rudder travel limits significantly reduced his ability to counter the resulting directional upset.
Probable cause
A directional upset on landing due to a thermally induced atmospheric disturbance, which the pilot was unable to successfully counter due to improperly set rudder travel limits.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16LA108
- Event ID
- 20160513X85711
- Case number
- WPR16LA108
- 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: 9530e00f64b65aebdc12d3a5a6c734787faccb034faf420308864ae842c3fba9; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:23:13.510Z.