ERA25LA199 · Cessna 182A
Cessna 182A · Accident: electrical system malfunction/failure before flight
From Palatka Municipal - Lt. Kay Larkin Field (28J) to Orlando Apopka Airport (X04)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA199
- 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 182A
- 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
- N174A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palatka Municipal - Lt. Kay Larkin Field (28J), Palatka, FLTo Orlando Apopka Airport (X04), Apopka, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 68 years (built 1957)
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- Electrical system malfunction/failure
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he departed from his home during the afternoon and flew to another airport where he refueled the airplane. While there he encountered problems operating his airplane’s avionics and lights. He then asked another pilot if he could follow him back in the direction of his home airport. After departing, he lost sight of the other airplane and could not contact the other pilot using his radio. As night fell and it became dark, he was unable to determine his location stating he “lost [his] way.” He felt that he was low on fuel and needed to land. He saw a road and decided to perform a precautionary landing. The pilot was unable to recall the events that transpired after that point, but during the landing the airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing and fuselage.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to depart on the flight with known electrical issues and his subsequent loss of situational awareness (geographic position), which resulted in his eventual decision to perform an off-airport landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA199
- Event ID
- 20250508200132
- Case number
- ERA25LA199
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2025-05-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9b3e411e95737d190005e842c63e525a872040259d00cf5710e7d90e7b91a681; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:52:37.549Z.