Cessna 182R N7306H accident near Rockwall, Texas

Probable cause

The pilot’s decision to continue an unstabilized approach and his delayed go-around decision, which resulted in the airplane’s impact with power lines and the ground. Contributing to the accident was the inaccurate wind direction reporting as a result of a misaligned crossarm on the weather reporting station.

NTSB analysis

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.

Text from the NTSB. Open the NTSB docket for CEN21LA055 for the full record.