ERA25LA017 · Cessna 182 P
Cessna 182 P · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Thomas C Russell Field (ALX) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA017
- 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 182 P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N1242M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Thomas C Russell Field (ALX), Alexander City, ALTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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 in flight
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot/owner stated that he checked the winds when he was more than 15 miles from the destination airport and again while established on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern. He said the automated weather observing system (AWOS) reported the winds were from 020°at 9 knots “with no gusts” and that he was landing on Runway 03. When over the runway threshold, the nose dropped “due to a decrease in headwind” so the pilot initiated a go-around. After applying “full” engine power and while configuring the airplane for the go-around, an “extreme perpendicular crosswind from the west blew the airplane into the path of trees lining the runway.” The pilot said he pulled back on the yoke to clear the trees, the right wing stalled, and the airplane landed hard in a flat attitude resulting in substantial damage and igniting a fire in the engine compartment. Three of the four occupants egressed the airplane with minor injuries while one occupant emerged uninjured. The pilot reported there were no preimpact anomalies or failures that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. Examination of the AWOS information reported at the airport 15 minutes before arrival revealed winds from 020° at 11 knots gusting to 19 knots. At the time of the accident, winds were reported to be from 040° at 12 knots gusting to 19 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate compensation for winds during landing., which resulted in a loss of control and an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA017
- Event ID
- 20241016195326
- Case number
- ERA25LA017
- 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: 312f665dc658a00e36691724b411e63b5046e87d5d88d6ae971ab4c2c52d74f7; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:23:20.071Z.