FTW04LA175 · Aeronca/Bubeck Bubeck-Aeronca
Aeronca/Bubeck Bubeck-Aeronca · Accident: hard landing
From Lawton Fort Sill Regional Airport (LAW) to Fort Worth Spinks Airport (FWS)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW04LA175
- 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
Aeronca/Bubeck Bubeck-Aeronca
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca/bubeck BUBECK-AERONCA
- 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
- N6030T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lawton Fort Sill Regional Airport (LAW), Lawton, OKTo Fort Worth Spinks Airport (FWS), Burleson, 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 · 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 856-hour private pilot reported that during a precautionary landing during night visual conditions, the airplane landed hard in an uneven field. The pilot stated that he was unable to locate the airport due to the darkness and intense light from fireworks adjacent to his location. Due to his low-fuel situation, the pilot elected to fly to an incorporated area and land. The pilot further stated that during the approach to a field, he saw the ground through the side window and thought he was approximately 10 feet above the ground at the time of impact.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation for the flight. Contributing factors were the night visual conditions, and the lack of suitable terrain for landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW04LA175
- Event ID
- 20040708X00931
- Case number
- FTW04LA175
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-07-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 206224fc253a990547b3012ae68a7226ca05d8f50e904e3d22b682021f251b6d; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:10:13.620Z.