SEA03LA057 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: hard landing
From Bert Mooney Airport (BTM) to Bert Mooney Airport (BTM)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA057
- 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
- N48733
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bert Mooney Airport (BTM), Butte, MTTo Bert Mooney Airport (BTM), Butte, MT
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- 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 student pilot had been circling near the airport waiting for the gusty variable winds to become more steady. When he started his approach, there was a crosswind of about five knots, but just about the time he was going to start his landing flare, the aircraft encountered a stronger gust. This resulted in the aircraft ballooning upward. The student pilot attempted to correct the ballooning by pushing forward on the control yoke, but his actions resulted in the aircraft striking the runway hard enough to bend the firewall and to start a fuel leak in the engine compartment. The pilot exited the aircraft while it was still on the runway, and soon after he was out of the cockpit, the aircraft caught on fire. The pilot was able to put the fire out once, but it reignited, and the aircraft was ultimately consumed by the flames. According to the pilot, there did not seem to be any problems with any of the aircraft's systems or fight controls.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for gusty variable wind conditions and his improper flare. Factors include gusty and variable winds .
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA057
- Event ID
- 20030414X00499
- Case number
- SEA03LA057
- 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: d7801abe3c8aa5c5933befcbb4092a8115e2da381c55cd6893acb28e0d06c2d7; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:25:46.637Z.