FTW04LA049 · Cessna 195B
Cessna 195B · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Buffalo Airport (1E7) to Buffalo Airport (1E7)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW04LA049
- 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 195B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 195
- 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
- N6850D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buffalo Airport (1E7), Amarillo, TXTo Buffalo Airport (1E7), Amarillo, TX
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Hydraulic system › Leak
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 1,073-hour pilot reported that during his preflight inspection prior to the accident flight, he observed a red fluid seeping from the belly of the aircraft. The pilot stated this was "becoming a common occurrence, requiring him to fill the brake reservoir frequently." The pilot checked the brakes prior to starting the engine and had no problems holding the airplane still with brakes during the engine run up. Unsatisfied with the landing on runway 20 (a 5,500-foot long and 124-foot wide turf runway), the pilot decided to make a touch-n-go landing without the use of the brakes. During the second landing, "all was well until the ground roll, at an approximate speed of 50 miles per hour." The aircraft started to veer to the right, and the pilot applied left brake. As the speed reduced, the aircraft began to ground loop, shearing off the left landing gear at the fuselage. Examination of the aircraft brake system by the pilot revealed hydraulic fluid was leaking the reservoir cap on the left brake master cylinder (Cessna Aircraft Illustrated Parts Catalog Part Number 0411302-21) in the area where the mounting lug (Part Number 0411302-8) bolts onto the reservoir cap.
Probable cause
The leakage of the left brake master cylinder cap, which resulted in the loss of hydraulic fluid and the failure of the left brake.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW04LA049
- Event ID
- 20031229X02093
- Case number
- FTW04LA049
- 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: 2621f00b866ee8c290a8afcf4a810b4e01535e663f3d347d7da9b2a03d3d37a1; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:20:09.121Z.