WPR23LA162 · Cessna R182
Edwards Construction Cessna R182 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Eagle Airpark (A09) to Valle Airport (40G)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA162
- 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
- 0
- 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 R182
- 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
- N4166C
- Operator
- Edwards Construction
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eagle Airpark (A09), Bullhead City, AZTo Valle Airport (40G), Grand Canyon, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1978)
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was on a cross-country flight when, about an hour into the flight, he noticed that the fuel was only being drawn from the left tank. He decided to conduct a precautionary landing at an en route airport. During the approach, the engine was “acting up” and he decided to add full power to perform a go-around. The engine then lost power, the airplane stalled, and both wings and the empennage impacted the ground. A postaccident examination of the airplane’s fuel system and engine did not reveal any preimpact mechanical anomalies or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Weather conditions were not conducive to the formation of carburetor ice. The cause of the inaccurate draining of the right wing fuel tank and the loss of power could not be determined.
Probable cause
The airplane’s loss of engine power for undetermined reasons and the pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack and subsequent failure to maintain adequate airspeed, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA162
- Event ID
- 20230425107119
- Case number
- WPR23LA162
- 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: a741735d3c643d84ba25c0a44230c1efbbcd56e54b364494fb1a82966ab778b9; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:32:30.272Z.