ERA17LA141 · Cessna R182
Scott Atwell Insurance Services Cessna R182 · Accident during takeoff
From Atwell Airport (1NC2) to Meadowlake Airport (12TN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA141
- 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
- 0
- 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 R182
- 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
- N2383C
- Operator
- Scott Atwell Insurance Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Atwell Airport (1NC2), Mooresville, NCTo Meadowlake Airport (12TN), Kingston, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1978)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 structures
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After an uneventful preflight inspection and engine runup, the private pilot attempted to take off from a 1,700-ft-long turf runway for the personal flight. During the takeoff roll, as the airplane reached a point on the runway where it would normally lift off (about 1,200 ft down the runway), the pilot pulled back on the yoke, but the airplane did not climb. The pilot recalled that the airspeed was close to 60 knots; he did not recall any engine instrument indications and noted that the engine sounded normal. When he realized that the airplane was not going to take off and a collision appeared imminent, he advised his passenger to prepare for impact. As the airplane approached a fence just beyond the departure end of the runway, he pulled back on the yoke and the airplane lifted off, flew over the fence, then descended and struck another fence before coming to rest in the driveway of his residence.
Examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Given this and the pilot's description that the engine appeared to be operating normally during the takeoff, it is unlikely that a partial loss of engine power contributed to the accident.
Review of takeoff performance data in the pilot operating handbook for the airplane make and model revealed that, given the airplane's weight and approximate weather conditions around the time of the accident, the airplane should have been able to become airborne with the runway available; however, the data assumed the flaps were set to 20° extension. Although the pilot believed the flaps were "down" when he started the takeoff roll, he noticed that they were "up" after the accident, which suggests that he may not have actually set them to 20° before initiating the takeoff. This fully retracted flap setting may have reduced the airplane's takeoff performance and resulted in a longer ground roll than expected.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly configure the airplane's flaps for takeoff, which resulted in a longer ground roll and subsequent runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA141
- Event ID
- 20170330X15034
- Case number
- ERA17LA141
- 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: 3b86c52220ee1ef0b32e15a5c4622d3c5a250a45219c993be315b7216cc09405; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:07:55.123Z.