ERA19LA131 · Cessna 182 D
Cessna 182 D · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Transylvania Community Airport (3NR3) to Asheville Regional Airport (AVL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA131
- 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 D
- 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
- N8905X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Transylvania Community Airport (3NR3), Brevard, NCTo Asheville Regional Airport (AVL), Asheville, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1961)
- 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 on ground
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot performed a preflight inspection after the airplane had undergone maintenance and no anomalies were noted. He boarded the airplane, adjusted the seat, and then verified that it was locked in position. Shortly after beginning the takeoff roll, his seat slid backward. He was unable to reach the rudder pedals, and the airplane departed the left side of the runway, nosed over, and came to rest inverted. Examination revealed that the pilot seat’s left front roller housing was disengaged from the seat rail. The seat rail exhibited scoring on top of the rail, which likely occurred during the accident sequence. No scoring was noted on the sides of the rail. The roller housing was not splayed or damaged, indicating that it did not pull off the rail during the accident sequence. Although the seat rail holes were slightly worn, the pin did not exhibit any anomalies. The mechanic stated that he did not remove the pilot's seat to perform the maintenance that he completed before the accident flight; however, given the lack of side damage to the rails and the fact that the left front seat roller housing was not splayed, it is likely that the roller housing came off the rails during the maintenance and went unnoticed by both the mechanic and the pilot, which resulted in the seat sliding backward during takeoff.
Probable cause
The mechanic's failure to notice that the left front seat left front roller housing disengaged from the seat rail during recent maintenance, and the pilot's failure to detect the disengaged roller housing during the preflight inspection, which resulted in the seat sliding backward during takeoff and a subsequent loss of airplane directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA131
- Event ID
- 20190313X90152
- Case number
- ERA19LA131
- 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: 3b6fd8262b027128c712819a61c76349da00ca139efd98950c48bfe779644b7a; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:39:51.557Z.