WPR25LA018 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA018
- 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
- 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
- N7847C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 70 years (built 1954)
- 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 · flare/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
- 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 systems
- 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 of the tailwheel-equipped airplane reported that while conducting a wheel landing on a dry lakebed, the airplane veered to the right. Subsequently, the airplane ground looped to the right, the left wing impacted the ground, and the airplane nosed over, coming to rest inverted. As a result, the airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing and empennage. The pilot stated he was unsure why the airplane swerved, adding that it could have been the result of the passenger unintentionally bracing their foot against the right rudder pedal.
The pilot also stated the swerve could have been the result of the right wheel brake locking; however, after he had egressed the airplane, he was able to spin the right wheel by hand without any binding noted. Additionally, during the airplane’s recovery and transportation, the airplane was able to be rolled on its main wheels with no instances of either main wheel brake locking or seizing.
Probable cause
The inadvertent application of brakes during landing that resulted in a ground loop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA018
- Event ID
- 20241016195327
- Case number
- WPR25LA018
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2024-10-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c26204c2e37a1675ac75cbbe166e0b1dd972334528435a4271d240b3a1821a0f; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:23:23.089Z.