WPR22FA043 · Cessna 182Q
Gulf Coast Helicopters Cessna 182Q · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Odessa Schlemeyer Field (KODO) to Gaines County Airport (KGNC)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22FA043
- 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
- 1 · 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 182Q
- 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
- N91AZ
- Operator
- Gulf Coast Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Odessa Schlemeyer Field (KODO), Odessa, TXTo Gaines County Airport (KGNC), Seminole, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1977)
- 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
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tower/antenna (incl guy wires)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting an oil and pipeline aerial observation flight. The airplane maneuvered and skirted around a Frequency Modulation (FM) tower to the south and continued a left turn to the northwest, clearing the tower, as the pilot resumed his pipeline observation. The tower’s height, as depicted on a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sectional chart, was 715 ft above the ground (agl) and was lit for nighttime operations. Shortly after, the airplane maneuvered to the southwest towards the same tower and the airplane struck a guy wire about 500 ft agl. The airplane impacted terrain and a postcrash fire ensued. A postaccident examination of the airplane wreckage did not reveal any mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot was likely headed towards the local airport and did not see the tower guy lines.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain separation from an FM tower guy wire while on an aerial survey flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22FA043
- Event ID
- 20211119104278
- Case number
- WPR22FA043
- 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: 36f762fc9c904b583b2a7944003c1dadf9461febfebcc190b31fe2567efbcbed; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:37:40.461Z.