WPR24LA145 · Cessna 195 B
Cessna 195 B · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Big Bear City Airport (L35) to Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA145
- 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 195 B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 195
- 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
- N2193C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Big Bear City Airport (L35), Big Bear, CATo Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL), Fullerton, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 69 years (built 1955)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the tailwheel-equipped airplane reported that during the takeoff roll, he applied control inputs to compensate for the crosswind, however, as the airplane’s tail lifted up, the airplane encountered a sudden strong crosswind gust. The airplane weather-vaned to the left, exited the runway surface and collided with the precision approach position indicator lights before it came to rest upright in an adjacent ditch. During the accident sequence, the airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings and the fuselage.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. At the time of the accident, the pilot was departing runway 8, with wind from 050° at 6 to 10 knots gusting to 8 to 15 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control during takeoff with a gusty crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA145
- Event ID
- 20240509194232
- Case number
- WPR24LA145
- 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: d79c490d10f38dc942e822a46aec25346404f67a0196c1563cad47f3f165f516; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:45:04.635Z.