WPR18FA211 · Cessna 414 Undesignat
Cessna 414 Undesignat · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From Buchanan Field (CCR) to John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18FA211
- 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
- 5 · 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 414 Undesignat
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 414
- 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
- N727RP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buchanan Field (CCR), Concord, CATo John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA), Santa Ana, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1973)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and four passengers were nearing the completion of a cross-county business flight. While maneuvering in the traffic pattern at the destination airport, the controller asked the pilot if he could accept a shorter runway. The pilot said he could not, so he was instructed to enter a holding pattern for sequencing; less than a minute later, the pilot said he could accept the shorter runway. He was instructed to conduct a left 270° turn to enter the traffic pattern. The pilot initiated a left bank turn and then several seconds later the bank increased, and the airplane subsequently entered a steep nose-down descent. The airplane impacted a shopping center parking lot about 1.6 miles from the destination airport.
A review of the airplane's flight data revealed that, shortly after entering the left turn, and as the airplane’s bank increased, its airspeed decreased to about 59 knots, which was well below the manufacturer’s published stall speed in any configuration. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engines revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. It is likely that the pilot failed to maintain airspeed during the turn, which resulted in an exceedance of the aircraft's critical angle of attack and an aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed while maneuvering in the traffic pattern which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and subsequent spin at a low altitude, which the pilot was unable to recover from.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18FA211
- Event ID
- 20180805X00700
- Case number
- WPR18FA211
- 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: 1257c3f43ebc80602b25e3b6bca7b9472d08738ee6eaae400473303ecc9a92f9; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:45:33.659Z.