NYC04CA131 · Cessna 120
Cessna 120 · Accident: overrun during takeoff
From New Castle, PA (no airport) to New Castle Municipal Airport (UCP)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04CA131
- 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
- N1996V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Castle, PA (no airport)To New Castle Municipal Airport (UCP), New Castle, PA
- 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 · rejected takeoff
- 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
- Overrun
- 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 › Aborted takeoff, delayed
- Pilot in command › All available runway, not used
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 attempted to takeoff from an approximately 1,500-foot portion of a field, on a 270 degree heading. The pilot said he initiated a short field takeoff, and had intended to make a trial run of about 500 feet to test the terrain; however, he felt that the acceleration was so good that he extended the takeoff roll and attempted to break ground. The airplane encountered some uneven terrain and the pilot aborted the takeoff. The airplane nosed over and came to rest in a tree line. A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector witnessed the takeoff. The inspector noted that if the pilot had departed to the south, approximately 5,000 feet of terrain was available for the takeoff roll. The pilot reported to the FAA inspector that he realized he was not going to clear the trees, so he aborted the takeoff and intentionally ground-looped the airplane. Winds reported at an airport located about 9 miles south of the accident site, about the time of the accident, were from 220 degrees at 10 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to use all available takeoff area and his delay in aborting the takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04CA131
- Event ID
- 20040615X00796
- Case number
- NYC04CA131
- 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: 60aebffcffd7f95ea4c5a168fe00c55263bb07c3a74a2dd2be61b99704ec8a44; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:27:58.678Z.