LAX06CA143 · Cessna 152
KS Aviation Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Merced Regional Macready Field (MCE) to Castle Airport (MER)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06CA143
- 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
- N757GF
- Operator
- KS Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merced Regional Macready Field (MCE), Merced, CATo Castle Airport (MER), Atwater, CA
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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 in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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
- Flightcrew › Airspeed, not obtained/maintained
- Flightcrew › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane settled to the ground during an attempted go-around from a bounced landing. The certified flight instructor (CFI) said that the accident occurred following the student's bounced landing on runway 30 and attempted go-around. The student applied full engine power, retracted the wing flaps to the 10-degree setting, turned the carburetor heat off, and lost directional control of the airplane. The CFI reported that the airplane yawed violently left, at which point he took the flight controls from his student while the airplane was still in ground effect. The CFI decided to continue the go-around procedure, but he was not able to salvage the maneuver, and the airplane continued a slow descent to the ground. The CFI further reported that the airplane touched down on the ground adjacent to the runway. Thereafter, directional control was lost and the airplane was substantially damaged when the left wing impacted the ground. At the time of the occurrence, the wind speed was 3 knots. The CFI had been a flight instructor for about 6 months prior to the accident.
Probable cause
the failure of the student and certified flight instructor to maintain directional control and obtain/maintain an adequate airspeed during the attempted go-around. The flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight was also causal.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06CA143
- Event ID
- 20060515X00573
- Case number
- LAX06CA143
- 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 2006-04-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2517c7844254284fb0c1ca48deb71869ce2f3d65e59936aba09261c8c265010e; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:58:47.189Z.