NYC96LA026 · Fairchild MERLIN IIIA MERLIN III
Fairchild MERLIN IIIA MERLIN III · Accident: hard landing
From DuBois Regional Airport (DUJ) to Pittsburgh/Butler Regional Airport (BTP)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96LA026
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Fairchild MERLIN IIIA MERLIN III
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild MERLIN IIIA
- 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
- N636SP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DuBois Regional Airport (DUJ), DU BOIS, PATo Pittsburgh/Butler Regional Airport (BTP)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flare, improper
- Pilot in command › Missed approach, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and copilot flew four ILS approaches at their destination airport. The first three attempts resulted in missed approaches, of which two were due to non-alignment with the runway. During the last ILS approach, the airplane cleared the clouds at 300 feet above the ground and 150 feet right of the runway. The pilot banked the airplane left, then right, to align the airplane with the runway. The airplane landed hard on the left main wheels, followed by the nose wheel, then the right main wheels. Examination of the airplane revealed no preimpact failure of the airplane or engines. The fuel flow of both engines were set to allow a maximum rate of descent when the engines were at idle. The pilot had initially reported that he, 'didn't know what happened...the airplane just seemed to suddenly quit flying, and fell out of the sky.'
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to perform a missed approach, when the airplane was not properly aligned with the landing runway; and his failure to properly flare the airplane, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96LA026
- Event ID
- 20001207X04913
- Case number
- NYC96LA026
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b81a744fb781d2e05b951010156ab2f1a7f35edcf1c267f74232bb6cca3897ea; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:03:56.274Z.