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NYC07FA051 · Cessna 414

26 Dec 2006 · Johnstown, PA, United States

Flight Source Cessna 414 · Accident: wheels up landing

From Morgantown Municipal Airport Walter L. (Bill) Hart Field (MGW) to Teterboro Airport (TEB)

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Event

NTSB case
NYC07FA051
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
2 · 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
Instrument Meteorological Cond

Cessna 414

Aircraft type
Cessna 414
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
N400CS
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Morgantown Municipal Airport Walter L. (Bill) Hart Field (MGW), Morgantown, WVTo Teterboro Airport (TEB), Teterboro, NJ
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
Wheels up landing
DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
Destroyed

Cause areas

  • Pilot in command › Planning/decision, 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 airplane encountered in-flight icing, and the pilot diverted to an airport to attempt to knock the ice off at a lower altitude. During the instrument approach, the pilot advised the tower controller of the ice, and that it depended on whether or not the ice came off the airplane if she would land. As the airplane broke out of the clouds, it appeared to tower personnel to be executing a missed approach; however, it suddenly "dove" for the runway. The tower supervisor noticed that the landing gear were not down, and at 75 to 100 feet above the runway, advised the pilot to go around. The airplane continued to descend, and by the time it impacted the runway, the landing gear were only partially extended, and the propellers and airframe impacted the pavement. The pilot then attempted to abort the landing. The damaged airplane became airborne, climbed to the right, stalled, and nosed straight down into the ground.

Probable cause

The pilot's improper decision to abort the landing with a damaged airplane. Contributing to the accident were the damage from the airplane's impact with the runway, the pilot's failure to lower the landing gear prior to the landing attempt, and the in-flight icing conditions.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record NYC07FA051
Event ID
20070105X00011
Case number
NYC07FA051
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: 5adf4b1e295bdfa6f3ef1254084fecfe6ad58cd237cee46d85d8c1675467524d; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:56:37.353Z.