MIA02LA005 · Cessna 152
Midlands Aviation Cessna 152 · Accident: hard landing
From Jim Hamilton L.B. Owens Airport (KCUB) to Pitt-Greenville Airport (KPGV)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02LA005
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N4768Q
- Operator
- Midlands Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Jim Hamilton L.B. Owens Airport (KCUB), Columbia, SCTo Pitt-Greenville Airport (KPGV), Greenville, NC
- 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
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 stated that the planned flight duration was 2 hours 45 minutes; approximately 3 hours into the flight he elected to divert to the Pitt-Greenville Airport due to fuel concerns. When near the airport he called on UNICOM which reported that the wind varied from the west/northwest direction at 10 knots. He entered the traffic pattern for runway 02 which was the active runway and elected to land with no flaps extended. He crabbed the airplane into the wind on final approach then when starting to flare, he lowered the left wing and applied right rudder input to align the longitudinal axis of the airplane with the runway. He further stated that the wind shifted suddenly at the time the left main landing gear contacted the runway which made a squealing sound. The right main landing gear then contacted the runway also making a squealing sound. The nose landing gear then touched down and collapsed and the airplane veered to the right coming to rest with the left wingtip contacting the runway. An automated METAR observation taken at 1300 hours local indicates in part that the wind was from 030 degrees at 11 knots with gusts to 14 knots. Post accident examination of the normal brake system revealed no discrepancies. Additionally, the main landing gear tires did not exhibit any evidence of flat spots.
Probable cause
The improper flare by the pilot-in-command resulting in a hard landing and subsequent collapse of the nose landing gear due to overload.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02LA005
- Event ID
- 20011018X02104
- Case number
- MIA02LA005
- 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: 943f1f2e284e3b96e1d4a5230807b54b2677dfcd56891d7c9581b5bc1a9bc90c; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:31:42.260Z.