CEN18LA123 · Mills Michael S1L
Mills Michael S1L · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing on approach
From Dewitt, MI to Dewitt, MI
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA123
- 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
- 1 · 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
Mills Michael S1L
- Aircraft type
- Mills Michael S1
- 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
- N197X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dewitt, MITo Dewitt, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2015)
- 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
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was attempting to land on an airstrip on his property, but on short final, the airplane struck power lines and then descended and impacted terrain.
Examination of the airframe, engine, and related systems revealed no evidence of any mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Before the accident flight, the pilot told a friend that he needed to return home before a certain time or there would be a problem with sun glare during landing. The pilot was approaching his airstrip on a westerly heading. The position of the sun was 14° above the horizon and about 20° left of the pilot's vision. The position of the sun likely hampered the pilot's ability to see the power lines, which resulted in his failure to avoid them.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to see and avoid power lines due to sun glare.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA123
- Event ID
- 20180319X90457
- Case number
- CEN18LA123
- 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: b35c0b3874d7467c2f5eae1d2cd7b9cda81c0d8c54b531c348575c7d93d6f6f9; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:36:25.776Z.