NYC92LA146 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: hard landing
From N92 · Middletown, DE to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC92LA146
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 150
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 150
- 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
- N5633E
- Operator
- George B. Zebley · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From N92 · Middletown, DETo not recorded
- 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 › Level off, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE STUDENT PILOT SAID, '...DESCENDED FOR FLARE TO LANDING. MISJUDGED RATE OF CLOSURE FOR FLARE WITH RUNWAY SURFACE....CONTACTED GROUND ON ALL THREE WHEELS, BOUNCED...CAME DOWN...ON NOSE WHEEL BREAKING OFF NOSE WHEEL....OVERTURNED AIRPLANE.' PILOT WAS CONDUCTING A SOLO CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT. PILOT HAD 143 HOURS TOTAL FLIGHT TIME, BUT APPROXIMATELY 70 HOURS WERE ACCUMULATED IN 1941. HE HAD APPROXIMATELY 15 HOURS SOLO FLIGHT TIME.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S IMPROPER LEVEL OFF WHICH RESULTED IN A HARD LANDING. CONTRIBUTING WAS AN INADEUATE RECOVERY FROM A BOUNCED LANDING, AND THE PILOT'S LACK OF TOTAL FLIGHT EXPERIENCE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC92LA146
- Event ID
- 20001211X15496
- Case number
- NYC92LA146
- 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: cebb5cd472ee7c3ac309c6733071356e96a6c71945ce263cb8f76cf805658b8a; retrieved 2026-09-21T23:10:57.864Z.