IAD01LA030 · Cessna 120
Cessna 120 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport (BHB) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD01LA030
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 120
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 120
- 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
- N3070N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport (BHB), Trenton, METo 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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 › Touchdown, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said the purpose of the flight was to practice takeoffs and landings in the snow. The landing gear was a tailwheel configuration equipped with skis. During the takeoff, the airplane lifted off prematurely after crossing a small berm. The airplane descended back down onto the snow, the left ski submerged under the surface, the left wing tip and the propeller struck the snow, and the airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted. The pilot reported 130 hours of total flight experience, of which, 30 hours were in make and model and 12 hours were on skis. The pilot said he had no formal instruction in ski-equipped airplanes, and that there were no mechanical deficiencies with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper touchdown in the snow after the airplane became prematurely airborne during an attempted takeoff. A factor was the pilot's inadequate training.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD01LA030
- Event ID
- 20010202X00385
- Case number
- IAD01LA030
- 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, coordinates. 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: 777f7dfb1edd7cf389f17a1efe48413e861a47638854c039e132d21a92fdd613; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:12:43.714Z.