Locair Flight 151
Fairchild SA227 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) to Lake Cumberland Regional Airport (SME)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA103
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Fairchild SA227
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild SA227
- 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
- N227ML
- Operator
- Locair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), Baltimore/Washi, MDTo Lake Cumberland Regional Airport (SME), Somerset, KY
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to witness statements and tire marks on the runway, the airplane touched down more than halfway down the runway while landing with a slight quartering tailwind. As the nosewheel contacted the runway, the airplane veered to the right. The pilot applied full left rudder and full reverse on the left power lever, but was unsuccessful in correcting the alignment of the airplane. He then engaged the nosewheel steering button on the left power lever, and the airplane began a more aggressive turn to the right. It departed the runway, traveled down an embankment, and came to rest against the airport boundary fence.
Postaccident examination of the airplane, engines, brakes, and nose landing gear steering actuator revealed no obvious mechanical anomalies. After the airplane was repaired and returned to service it again experienced an intermittent loss of steering. As a result, a series of troubleshooting taxi tests were performed. The airplane veered off the runway as it reached an airspeed of 50 knots and the brakes were applied. Further examination of the airplane revealed damaged wires in the nosewheel steering harness, which would have caused an intermittent loss of steering. Although an electrical anomaly contributed to the loss of control, the fact that the pilots landed long, and potentially with excess speed, resulted in less runway and time available to recover from the anomaly.
Probable cause
Damaged wiring in the nosewheel steering harness, which resulted in a loss of control during landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilots' improper touchdown point.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA103
- Event ID
- 20100103X60452
- Case number
- ERA10LA103
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. 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: 4dee384d780f006955f27cf9caa120ff95cc0c7e88e3f91df5feb6e09d063abd; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:36:02.814Z.