CEN24LA265 · Cessna 180 J
Cessna 180 J · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Wexford County Airport (KCAD) to Leroy, MI (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA265
- 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 180 J
- 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
- N7827K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wexford County Airport (KCAD), Cadillac, MITo Leroy, MI (private airstrip)
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1976)
- 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 · aborted after touchdown
- 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 › 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 was attempting to land at a private, freshly mowed, grass airstrip about 800 ft long. The airplane touched down and bounced. The pilot reported that he waited for the airplane to “settle” and applied brakes upon contact with the runway, but the airplane did not decelerate as expected. The pilot attempted a go-around; however, the airplane was unable to sufficiently climb before it impacted trees past the end of the runway. The airplane came to rest nose down and sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and both wings. 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 landing the airplane to the north. The nearest reported wind, 14 miles north of the accident site, was from 230° at 9 knots gusting to 14 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane while performing a go-around, which resulted in an inflight collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA265
- Event ID
- 20240715194691
- Case number
- CEN24LA265
- 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: 487142be8f8d635bc8d6175dc7a2f7955b3905d16367066999582ba2e25e0c0e; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:02:27.237Z.