WPR19FA209 · Cessna 182 L
Cessna 182 L · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Miles City Airport - Frank Wiley Field (MLS) to Wolf Point, MT
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19FA209
- 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
- 2 · 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 L
- 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
- N3469R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miles City Airport - Frank Wiley Field (MLS), Miles City, MTTo Wolf Point, MT
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1967)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and passenger planned to visit a farm by landing on an adjacent dirt road. The pilot had previously been to the farm but had never flown there. The owner of the farm watched as the pilot crossed over the road and made a left turn to parallel the road. The airplane then began another left turn, consistent with a left base-to-final turn, during which the airplane continued past the road before it entered a sharp turn and descended into terrain. Upon impact, the airplane burst into flames.
A postaccident examination revealed no anomalies that that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. The circumstances of the accident are consistent with the pilot exceeding the airplane’s critical angle of attack while maneuvering for landing on the road, resulting in an accelerated stall, loss of control, and impact with terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack while maneuvering to land, which resulted in an accelerated aerodynamic stall and subsequent loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19FA209
- Event ID
- 20190806X45857
- Case number
- WPR19FA209
- 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: 1b4d07c121226ce76f604e6f6c423f5dcd449a329ef20889174c32b60357751d; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:02:53.688Z.