WPR18FA279 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Brackett Field (KPOC) to Brackett Field (KPOC)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18FA279
- 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 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N46321
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brackett Field (KPOC), La Verne, CATo Brackett Field (KPOC), La Verne, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1977)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and passenger were departing the airport; a witness stated that he heard backfiring during the airplane's takeoff roll. He then observed the airplane become airborne and the landing gear start to retract. About 1 minute 30 seconds after the pilot received take off clearance, the pilot requested a return to the airport due to an engine problem. The air traffic controller cleared the pilot to land on runway 8L, and the pilot subsequently initiated a right turn. The witness then observed the airplane descend to the ground in a nose-low attitude. It is likely that, while returning to the airport after takeoff, the pilot failed to maintain the proper airspeed, which resulted in the exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and the airplane experienced an aerodynamic stall. Examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation and the cause of the engine problem, as reported by the pilot, could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed and the exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack during a turn, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and subsequent loss of control. Contributing to the accident was an undetermined engine anomaly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18FA279
- Event ID
- 20180930X31500
- Case number
- WPR18FA279
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-09-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ee774ebdd77442b6d28000b66dbf956605d7c0b38a926f427c4d73437ad6b5b3; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:48:44.466Z.