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Atlas / NTSB / WPR25LA076

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event WPR25LA076

2024-12-31 Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States Airport · LAM None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N71074

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

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

Registrant of record

BAS PART SALES LLC

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

Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or 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 ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (wind shear, stall, turbulence). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗