ERA24LA312 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Virginia Highlands Airport (VJI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA312
- 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
- N185GS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Virginia Highlands Airport (VJI), Abingdon, VATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 46 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
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 of the tailwheel-equipped airplane reported that after completing a short cross-country flight, he entered the airport pattern for a full-stop landing. The pilot described that he configured the airplane up for a “full stall, 3-point landing” and upon touching down, the airplane “abruptly swerved to the right.” The pilot recounted that it felt “as if the right brake was applied” but reported that both of his feet were off the brakes. The pilot applied left brake, but it was ineffective because the left wheel was pulled off the runway by the abrupt swerve to the right. To compensate, the pilot increased throttle input, which inadvertently resulted in the airplane beginning a climb away from the runway before entering a descending left turn. Following the accident, a Federal Aviation Administration inspector examined the airplane’s wheels, tires, and brakes, and found no evidence of any anomalies. A subsequent detailed inspection of the right brake by a mechanic revealed that the internal components of the brake had little wear and showed no evidence of damage or defects. The left main landing gear separated from the fuselage during the accident sequence, therefore the integrity of the hydraulic system used to actuate the brake could not be evaluated.
Probable cause
A loss of directional control during the landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA312
- Event ID
- 20240722194731
- Case number
- ERA24LA312
- 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: a704ca86ac115731a75c3d3c82a37612d6ca103091241c361b2ee8864e6d7cac; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:03:53.625Z.