CEN18LA250 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From Childress Municipal Airport (CDS) to Lago Vista Texas Rusty Allen Airport (RYW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA250
- 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 180
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N2469C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Childress Municipal Airport (CDS), Childress, TXTo Lago Vista Texas Rusty Allen Airport (RYW), Lago Vista, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 64 years (built 1954)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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 airline transport pilot was conducting a personal flight when the airplane rolled left during the landing flare and then landed hard on the left main landing gear (MLG). The airplane bounced and landed hard and then bounced again on the left MLG. The left MLG spring separated from the fuselage on the third contact with the runway. The airplane subsequently ground looped to the left and came to rest heading about 180° from the original runway direction. The left main wing spar was substantially damaged when the left wingtip impacted the runway.
Postaccident materials examination of the fractured left MLG spring revealed a multiple-origin fatigue crack where the landing gear fixation hardware contacted the landing gear spring. The maintenance logbooks were not complete; therefore, it could not be determined if the left MLG spring had been replaced or overhauled since new. The separation of the left MLG gear spring during landing was likely due to the fatigue crack that reduced the overall strength of the landing gear spring.
Probable cause
The separation of the left main landing gear spring during landing due to a preexisting fatigue crack.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA250
- Event ID
- 20180702X85258
- Case number
- CEN18LA250
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-07-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e350c13d0382c9c4bc019ad01dc4baebe528ef8f0c665d9e700485c8e5d03dba; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:44:09.255Z.