GAA16CA465 · Cessna TR182
West Air Aviation Cessna TR182 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Eastern Sierra Regional Airport (BIH) to Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA465
- 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 TR182
- 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
- N738GK
- Operator
- West Air Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eastern Sierra Regional Airport (BIH), Bishop, CATo Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL), South Lake Tahoe, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1979)
- 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 · aborted after 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during landing the airplane floated half way down the runway, so she decided to perform a go-around. During the go-around, the pilot reported that airplane would not climb initially and one wheel touched down on the runway, which "threw the airplane off kilter." Subsequently, the airplane did start to climb, but the flight path was over the grass to the right of the runway, so she forced the airplane down in the grass ahead. During the touchdown, the nose gear collapsed and the airplane nosed over.
During a postaccident interview with the National Transportation Safety Board investigator-in-charge, the pilot reported that during the go-around, she retracted the flaps to 20 degrees, but she forgot to remove the carburetor heat because she normally flies fuel-injected airplanes.
The fuselage, both wings, and vertical stabilizer sustained substantial damage.
The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot's operating handbook for the accident airplane states in part:
Balked Landing 1. Power – FULL THROTTLE and 2400 RPM [revolutions per minute]. 2. Carburetor Heat – COLD. 3. Wing Flaps – RETRACT to 20 degrees. 4. Climb Speed – 75 KIAS [knots indicated airspeed]. 5. Wing Flaps – RETRACT slowly after reach 75 KIAS. 6. Cowl Flaps – OPEN.
About the time of the accident, at the accident airport, an automated weather observing system reported the wind to be variable at 6 knots, a temperature of 66 degrees Fahrenheit(19 Celsius), and a dew point of 26 degrees Fahrenheit (-3 Celsius). The airport's elevation was 6,268 feet above mean sea level (MSL) and the density altitude was 8,108 feet above MSL.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during an attempted go-around, which resulted in a runway excursion and a nose over. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to remove the carburetor heat during the attempted go-around in high density altitude conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA465
- Event ID
- 20160906X42741
- Case number
- GAA16CA465
- 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: c99635809c6c75602d0c72867967157637f642b7ab3c4e0ea44960bffa8018a8; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:13:52.544Z.