Southeast Air Services Cessna 188 accident
Cessna 188 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Altona Municipal Airport (CJL6) to Altona Municipal Airport (CJL6)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA270
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 188
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- C-GWWE
- Operator
- Southeast Air Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Altona Municipal Airport (CJL6), AltonaTo Altona Municipal Airport (CJL6), Altona
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1975)
- 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
- Non-U.S., Commercial
- 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was spraying a field with north-south passes. During a left turn from the south toward the north, the airplane impacted the ground with the left wing down on a southeasterly heading. Due to the pilot’s injuries, he did not recall the accident sequence. Examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Strong westerly wind at the time of the accident likely created a ground track challenge during the turnaround. Based on the airplane’s impact with the left wing down and significant forward groundspeed, the pilot likely either exceeded the critical angle of attack or developed a high sink rate during the turnaround and was not able to regain control prior to ground impact.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control during an aerial spray turnaround in high crosswind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA270
- Event ID
- 20200709X22711
- Case number
- CEN20LA270
- 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: 04e591db9c8c3b9ecb51a0690bdaf450c7793da02b481fe1f2e695b8054a86c2; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:04:45.615Z.