Loss of Control in Flight · NTSB CEN21LA055
CESSNA 182R — Rockwall, TX
| Date | November 12, 2020 |
| Location | Rockwall, TX |
| Aircraft | CESSNA 182R |
| Purpose of flight | Personal |
| Conditions | Day · Visual Meteorological Cond |
| Phase / occurrence | Approach-VFR go-around Collision with terr/obj (non-CFIT) |
| Pilot age | 75 |
| Pilot total time | 2,175 hrs · Experienced |
| Time in type | Unknown |
| Fatalities | 2 |
Probable cause
NTSB findings
- Personnel issues-Action/decision-Info processing/decision-Decision making/judgment-Pilot
- Environmental issues-Physical environment-Object/animal/substance-Wire-Contributed to outcome
- Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Wind-Tailwind-Accuracy of related info
What happened
The pilot was on approach to the destination airport and elected to land on runway 35, which was the opposite direction of other aircraft in the traffic pattern. A pilot in the traffic pattern reported that he made radio transmissions to the accident pilot to inform him that runway 17 was in use, but the accident pilot did not respond.
Multiple surveillance cameras captured the accident sequence and showed that the airplane did not touch down on the runway until about one-half way down the usable runway area. After the airplane touched down and passed the segmented circle, smoke from the main landing gear wheels could briefly be seen. Immediately afterward, the airplane overran the departure end of the runway and descended toward lower terrain before the airplane ascended slightly and impacted power lines that were located about 440 ft north of the departure end of the runway. The airplane impacted the ground in a right-wing-low attitude and sustained substantial damage to both wings and the fuselage.
A postaccident inspection of the automated weather observing system revealed that a missing mounting screw allowed the crossarm to be misaligned at some point before the accident. As a result, the wind was reported as 30° to 40° to the west of the actual wind direction at the time of the accident flight. This misalignment resulted in the airplane landing with a slight tailwind as opposed to the headwind the pilot was expecting based upon the reported wind condition.