GAA17CA559 · Cessna 182 P
Cessna 182 P · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Compton Woodley Airport (CPM) to Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA559
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 182 P
- 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
- N9346G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Compton Woodley Airport (CPM), Compton, CATo Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM), San Diego, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1971)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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 pilot reported that he took off in dark night conditions and was using flight following. When he arrived at the destination airport, he activated the runway lights while entering the downwind leg. While on final approach, the runway lights suddenly turned off, so he aborted the landing. The pilot again activated the runway lights on the downwind leg, but this time he flew a short base leg to final. The airplane was at a lower altitude for the approach and suddenly entered a heavy band of fog. The left wing subsequently hit the soft dirt, cartwheeled, and then came to rest inverted about 1/4 mile short of the runway.
Postaccident examination revealed substantial damage to the left wing and fuselage.
The weather conditions reported at the airport, about the time of the accident, were calm wind, visibility 4 statute miles, moderate mist, clouds scattered 100 ft, temperature 15°C, dew point 15°C, and an altimeter setting 29.24 inches of mercury.
The pilot did not submit the National Transportation Safety Board Pilot/Operator Aircraft Accident /Incident Report Form 6120.1.
Probable cause
The airplane’s inadvertent entry into instrument meteorological, dark night conditions and the pilot’s failure to maintain an adequate approach for landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA559
- Event ID
- 20170927X35055
- Case number
- GAA17CA559
- 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: 3a1118ed03f43e287bdc5a2d260add407b54bb30cbe9271b9455052859417910; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:53:34.476Z.