MIA05CA068 · Cessna 305A
Cessna 305A · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Bartow Executive Airport (BOW) to Bartow Executive Airport (BOW)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA05CA068
- 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 305A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 305
- 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
- N54550
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bartow Executive Airport (BOW), Bartow, FLTo Bartow Executive Airport (BOW), Bartow, FL
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
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 stated this was his first flight in this specific airplane and after a orientation flight, they returned to the Bartow Municipal Airport to land. Upon making a three point landing, the airplane seemed normal, but it then began to swerve to the left. The pilot corrected with rudder, but passed through the center line of the runway. The airplane then began to bounce traveling perpendicular to the centerline. The right main wheel separated from the spring shank and at this point it dug into the runway spinning aircraft to the right. The plane settled down on its belly, right wing low. The pilot-rated passenger stated that the preflight, takeoff, taxi, flight, and landing approach were all normal, until touchdown, when the airplane ground-looped. During the landing roll an uncontrolled turn to the left commenced, then it tightened up, damaging the landing gear and causing the wing tip to drag, followed by the propeller striking the runway. The aircraft came to rest after spinning 270-degrees, and stopped at the edge of the runway. The pilots stated there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions to the airplane or any of its systems prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilots failure to maintain directional control resulting in the airplane ground-looping. A factor in the accident was the pilots lack of total experience in the airplane make and model.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA05CA068
- Event ID
- 20050401X00392
- Case number
- MIA05CA068
- 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: 9fd6fd2acac2971854e3a9e19e6f73ccdb0db628b22dca5e70abf76579929e7f; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:14:56.095Z.