CEN18LA162 · Cessna 182 E
Cessna 182 E · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC) to Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA162
- 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 182 E
- 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
- N3292Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC), Denver, COTo Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC), Denver, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1962)
- 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
- Other
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had conducted a personal flight to a grass airstrip, where he completed two uneventful full-stop landings before returning to the departure airport for a final landing. The pilot reported that on the final landing the airplane initially touched down on the main landing gear, but when the nose gear contacted the runway, the airplane immediately swerved right and nosed over in the grass beside the runway, resulting in substantial damage to the vertical stabilizer, rudder, and right wing strut. A witness reported seeing the airplane on final approach with its nose wheel rotated about 75° from its normal alignment.
The upper link arm of the nose landing gear torque link assembly had fractured near its upper end, which allowed the nose wheel to rotate freely on the landing gear strut. A laboratory examination revealed evidence of a downward bending overstress failure. Although the examination also identified an isolated area of preexisting fatigue on the right flange and a closed crack on the left flange, they did not contribute to the bending overstress failure of the upper torque link. Based on the available evidence, the upper link arm fractured earlier in the flight, and the pilot would have been unaware of the damage to the nose gear before the final landing.
Probable cause
The overstress fracture of the upper link of the nose landing gear torque link assembly, which resulted in the pilot’s inability to maintain directional control during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA162
- Event ID
- 20180507X42518
- Case number
- CEN18LA162
- 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, cause areas. 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: a9f475ca7cad038e61c311dc196d8755bfb5403f68a5e33532154d9a320e77a6; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:02:31.682Z.