ERA18FA118 · Cessna R182
Cessna R182 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD) to Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18FA118
- 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
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
- N3167C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD), Gadsden, ALTo Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY), New Orleans, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 40 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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 in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot departed on a day visual flight rules cross-country flight. About 7 miles from the departure airport, he contacted air traffic control (ATC) and requested flight following services, stating that he was climbing from 700 ft mean sea level (msl) (about 131 ft above ground level) to 2,500 ft msl. The controller issued the pilot a discrete transponder code and the pilot acknowledged; however, there were no further communications with the pilot. The pilot was reported missing by family members when he did not arrive at his destination, and the wreckage was located 2 days later in heavily-wooded, level terrain.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Toxicology testing identified tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and its primary metabolite in liver, kidney, and lung specimens. While this indicated that the pilot had used marijuana at some point before the flight, without results from a blood specimen, it could not be determined when he used it or whether it may have had impairing effects at the time of the accident. A coworker of the pilot stated that he and the pilot were working into the early morning on the day of the accident and he believed the pilot did not have much, if any, sleep before departing on the accident flight.
The pilot's communications with ATC suggest that the flight up to that point had been routine, and the reason for the airplane's descent and impact with terrain could not be determined. Additionally, there was insufficient evidence to determine whether fatigue, impairment, or incapacitation may have contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
Descent and impact with terrain for reasons that could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18FA118
- Event ID
- 20180330X30423
- Case number
- ERA18FA118
- 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: 9313496305820c18af71eae1a1d70d6bb77543f0a8424209ae49aaa1662edd47; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:37:27.986Z.