WPR20CA149 · Cessna 185 Undesignat
Cessna 185 Undesignat · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Great Falls International Airport (GTF) to Left Coulee Airport (LC0)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20CA149
- 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 185 Undesignat
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N185
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Great Falls International Airport (GTF), Great Falls, MTTo Left Coulee Airport (LC0), Winifred, MT
- Aircraft age
- About 59 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
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that trees lined the east side of the dirt airstrip, and the first 800 ft sloped up, then doglegged to the left at the top. The pilot reported that he flew over the treetops and after he flared the airplane, it touched down and bounced. The pilot added power to counteract the bounce; however, it bounced a second time. The pilot then added full power to go around. While the airplane was still in ground effect, it crested the top of the upslope and a strong gust of wind pushed the airplane to the right directly toward a tree. The pilot added left rudder control in an attempt to avoid the tree; however, the outboard portion of the right wing impacted the tree. The airplane entered a sideways skid, touched down, and skidded for about 150 ft before it came to a stop. The fuselage and both wings were substantially damaged. The pilot reported no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
An inadequate flare that resulted in a bounced landing and the pilot's subsequent delayed decision to go-around that did not allow for sufficient clearance from trees when the airplane was affected by a gusting wind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20CA149
- Event ID
- 20200518X11141
- Case number
- WPR20CA149
- 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 2020-05-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7ccfc41f97749c0db7edafe83b70321163b96d034a06d4c7d3614d0d3f9125f3; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:37:45.811Z.