WPR25LA076
2024-12-31 · Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States · None · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed
Airport LAM
Current FAA registration · N71074
- Make / Model
- CESSNA 182M
- Year of manufacture
- 1968 · 56 years old at event
- Engine
- CONT MOTOR O-470 SERIES (230 hp)
- Seats / Engines
- 4 seats · 1 engine
- Last airworthiness date
- 19690303
- ADS-B equipped
- Yes — Mode-S A97F77
Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control while landing in gusty crosswind conditions.
Factual narrative
The pilot reported that while monitoring his destination airport’s automated weather report during a local flight he discovered that the wind had was initially from 180° at 7 knots but had increased to 11 knots with gusts to 18 knots. The pilot selected runway 27 for landing, and during final approach, encountered turbulence along with a fluctuation in airspeed of plus or minus 10 miles per hour, which he attributed to possible low-level wind shear. When about 50 ft above ground level, the pilot heard the stall warning horn while in a nose down attitude. The pilot stated that he focused on solely on airspeed and failed to maintain appropriate crosswind correction, as wind gusts pushed the airplane towards the left side of the runway. The pilot was unable to recover from the uncommanded movement and the airplane touched down on or near the left edge of the runway beyond the runway threshold. The airplane crossed the grassy area between the runway and taxiway, struck a taxiway curb and the nose landing gear collapsed, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12
NTSB Findings
FAA avdata. C = Cause, F = Factor.
- — Personnel issues-Action/decision-Info processing/decision-Decision making/judgment-Pilot
- — Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Wind-Gusts-Effect on operation
- — Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2024_WPR25LA076.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Search this event elsewhere
External sources are reported, not agency: signal that something happened, not fact about what happened.
- TallyAero Live Wire Aviation press
- NTSB CAROL Agency ↗
- NTSB Docket Agency ↗
- Aviation Safety Network Aviation press ↗
- Kathryn's Report Aviation press ↗
- Aviation Herald Aviation press ↗
- AVweb Aviation press ↗
- Pilots of America Community ↗
- Reddit /r/flying Community ↗
- FlightAware Aviation press ↗
- AOPA accident database Aviation press ↗
- Google News News ↗
- DuckDuckGo News ↗
Related research
Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (wind shear, stall, turbulence). All research papers
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Contractor Report (CR) An Examination of Aviation Accidents Associated with Turbulence, Wind Shear and Thunderstorm
The focal point of the study reported here was the definition and examination of turbulence, wind shear and thunderstorm in relation to aviation accidents.
- Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons 2021 · Journal article (IJAAA) Comparative Study on the Prediction of Aerodynamic Characteristics of Mini - Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with Turbulence Models
When dealing with CFD simulations the turbulent nature is seen on most of the engineering flows and these flows need to be solved.
- arXiv 2020 · arXiv preprint Numerical Simulation of Iced Wing Using Separating Shear Layer Fixed Turbulence Models
Aerodynamic prediction of glaze ice accretion on airfoils and wing is studied using the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes method.
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Conference Paper Optimal recovery from microburst wind shear
The flight path of a twin-jet transport aircraft is optimized in a microburst encounter during approach to landing. The objective is to execute an escape maneuver that maintains safe ground clearance …
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Preprint (Draft being sent to journal) Convectively Induced Turbulence Encountered During NASA's Fall-2000 Flight Experiments
Aircraft encounters with atmospheric turbulence are a leading cause of in-flight injuries aboard commercial airliners and cost the airlines millions of dollars each year.
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Conference Paper Prediction of stall and post-stall behavior of airfoils at low and high Reynolds numbers
An interactive boundary-layer method, together with the e(super n)-approach to the calculation of transition, has been used to predict the stall and post-stall behavior of airfoils at low and high Rey…