WPR23LA353 · Cessna 180K
Cessna 180K · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Page Municipal Airport (PGA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA353
- 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 180K
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N63130
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Page Municipal Airport (PGA), Page, AZTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 46 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
- Landing
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 stated that he made an uneventful flight to the destination airport and configured the tailwheel-equipped airplane for landing. During the approach he noted that there was no unusual gust or crosswind, and he touched down on the main wheels just after the runway’s identification numbers. On the landing roll, the pilot reduced the power to idle, and the tailwheel settled on the runway. The airplane encountered a sudden wind gust, raising the right wing. Despite the pilot’s attempts to maintain directional control, the airplane ground-looped to the right and departed the runway surface. The airplane continued into a ditch and the left gear collapsed, resulting in the left wing contacting the ground. The pilot reported that there were no pre impact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control after encountering a wind gust on the landing roll, which resulted in a ground loop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA353
- Event ID
- 20230926193142
- Case number
- WPR23LA353
- 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: 99157bb66dca2277280ab7d2f131c7c62e09c3899e9c0e7627fd639d6b9ae4e5; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:09:53.596Z.