CHI07CA293 · Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) Ercoupe 415C
Utmd Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) Ercoupe 415C · Accident: hard landing
From Middletown Regional Airport (MWO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07CA293
- 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
Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) Ercoupe 415C
- Aircraft type
- Ercoupe (eng Research ERCOUPE 415
- 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
- N93783
- Operator
- Utmd
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Middletown Regional Airport (MWO), Middletown, OHTo not recorded
- 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
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, 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 pilot landed hard on runway 5 (6,100 feet by 100 feet, asphalt) while practicing landings in preparation for a sport pilot practical test. He had conducted 3 landings prior to the accident. The pilot noted that he was flying the accident approach at 60 miles-per-hour (mph), instead of his normal approach speed of 70 mph. He recalled winds being from 300 degrees at 8 -10 knots. The pilot stated that as he entered the landing flare, the airplane was right of the runway centerline, at a "very slow" airspeed. He reported that he "put [the] nose down to pick up airspeed and added a little (too little) power." The airplane landed on the nose wheel and bounced. He added power but the airplane hit a second time. The airplane subsequently came to a stop and he taxied to the ramp. The post accident inspection revealed that the nose wheel had fractured and the firewall was damaged. The pilot reported no failures or malfunctions prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare and his inadequate recovery from the bounced landing. A contributing factor was the lower than normal airspeed maintained during the final approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07CA293
- Event ID
- 20071011X01561
- Case number
- CHI07CA293
- 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: cd783d79e68b7a83a28b60933f385a870a57347f9a35a33ca4f22a49d54d2ad3; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:28:38.353Z.