CEN24LA047 · Cessna A185F
Southern Seaplane Cessna A185F · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Southern Seaplane Airport (65LA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA047
- 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 A185F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N61919
- Operator
- Southern Seaplane
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southern Seaplane Airport (65LA), Belle Chasse, LATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1981)
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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
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 reported that she had setup for landing on an intracoastal waterway and picked a landing area based on the locations of three nearby boats. During final approach, she had the three boats in sight, one of which was on the far right side of waterway and traveling in the same direction. She determined that the boats would not be a factor and continued to land. The airplane touched down on the choppy water and she added power to keep the airplane on the step. Immediately after touchdown the airplane veered left, then nosed over and sustained substantial damage to the right wing. The pilot egressed the airplane without further incident. She noticed that the recreational boat that was originally on the right side of the waterway was now on the left side and the boat driver stated that the airplane hit the boat. Since the pilot was seated in the left seat, her view to the lower right area of the airplane would have been restricted by the airframe. The pilot added that three other airplanes had just landed on the waterway and there was one more in position to land behind her.
Probable cause
A recreational boat crossed in front of the airplane’s path during landing on the water which resulted in the airplane colliding with the boat.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA047
- Event ID
- 20231127193427
- Case number
- CEN24LA047
- 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: f88cc917dc44f03ab8908ddabcc00827a9bd5a905620a36687b4d224fce45de7; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:19:08.972Z.