Acme Flight Service Cessna 404 accident
Cessna 404 · Accident: hard landing
From Indianapolis International Airport (IND) to Tri-State Airport / Milton J. Ferguson Field (HTS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL85LA262
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Cessna 404
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 404
- 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
- N255CS
- Operator
- Acme Flight Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Indianapolis International Airport (IND), Indianapolis, INTo Tri-State Airport / Milton J. Ferguson Field (HTS)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Visual/aural perception
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
SEVERAL MEN WHO WERE IN A BUILDING AT THE AIRPORT REPORTED THAT THEY COULD HEAR THE AIRCRAFT ON THE APPROACH AND THEN A LOUD NOISE. THEY COULD NOT SEE THE RUNWAY OR THE AIRCRAFT DUE TO THE FOG. THEY GOT IN THE FIRE AND RESCUE VEHICLES AND HAD A HARD TIME FINDING THE PLANE. THE PILOT WAS UNINJURED BUT THE AIRCRAFT HAD A BROKEN RIGHT MAIN LANDING GEAR AND OTHER DAMAGE THAT LEAD THE OPERATORS MAINTENANCE DIRECTOR TOSTATE THAT THE AIRCRAFT HAD A HARD LANDING. THE PILOT STATEDTHAT HE COULD SEE THE RUNWAY FROM 15 MILES OUT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL85LA262
- Event ID
- 20001214X37382
- Case number
- ATL85LA262
- 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: 9c4be89f94765b6f8bc60f02bbb0fe97300c3c4b1674ef8772415c33ce317fdd; retrieved 2026-09-18T20:15:39.979Z.