WPR21LA344 · Cessna 182E
Cessna 182E · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Columbia Gorge Regional Airport (KDLS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA344
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 182E
- 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
- N3186Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Gorge Regional Airport (KDLS), The Dalles, ORTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1962)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the airplane’s nosewheel touched the ground, the airplane veered aggressively to the right then left. The pilot applied corrective control inputs, but the airplane departed the runway, tipped onto the left wing, and spun around.
The airplane’s nosewheel had been modified in accordance with a supplemental type certificate, which raised the nose of the airplane by 4 inches. The modified geometry resulted in the airplane being more susceptible to control difficulties during landing, unless a soft field landing technique was used. The pilot stated that the landing was normal, and there was no damage to the runway surface at the touchdown point to suggest otherwise. However, he stated that the airplane swerved aggressively on the previous landing earlier in the day during high gusting wind conditions.
Examination of the airplane did not reveal any anomalies with the steering system; however, there was damage to the firewall and nosewheel strut that indicated the nosewheel had struck the ground hard. Based on the pilot’s report that the airplane swerved aggressively during a landing earlier in the day, it is likely that the airplane was damaged during that landing, which caused the loss of control during the accident landing.
Probable cause
Loss of directional control due to damage to the nosewheel strut that was sustained during a previous landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA344
- Event ID
- 20210914103859
- Case number
- WPR21LA344
- 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, coordinates, 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: 94196726e18726537566aac2499530c19e4e3fdb5617f541b0ae122913cbe489; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:31:40.683Z.