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FTW02LA149 · Cessna 152

9 May 2002 · Houston, TX, United States

Cessna 152 · Accident: hard landing

From EYQ · Houston, TX to EYQ

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Event

NTSB case
FTW02LA149
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
N48819
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From EYQ · Houston, TXTo EYQ
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 › Recovery from bounced landing, improper

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

With a flight instructor on board, the student pilot demonstrated four touch-and-go landings on runway 15, and one approach that was followed by a go-around. The flight instructor reported that the wind was "straight down the runway at 7 knots." The instructor exited the airplane so that the student pilot could solo the airplane in the traffic pattern. This was the student's fifth solo flight. The student pilot performed the first touch-and-go landing without incident. During the second approach, while on short final, she noted that her airspeed was "around 80 knots, which was too high." She attempted to slow the airplane; however, due to "gusty winds on short final, [she] panicked." The student reported that the airplane was "near the runway" when the airplane encountered a downdraft, which "caused [it] to slam onto the runway" with both main landing gear. The airplane bounced two times, during which the nose landing gear collapsed. Subsequently, the airplane exited the right side of the runway, nosed over, and came to rest inverted. A weather observation facility 23 miles southeast of the accident site reported the wind from 190 degrees at 15 knots near the time of the accident.

Probable cause

the student pilot's improper recovery from a bounced landing, which resulted in a nose over.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record FTW02LA149
Event ID
20020515X00675
Case number
FTW02LA149
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: cab14867e1f7c8e3bc1a5d3a4770b93fab5d3a79327e12e68772412e1c60e082; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:57:10.430Z.