WPR10CA390 · Cessna 152
Ahart Aviation Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Castle Airport (KMER) to Livermore Municipal Airport (KLVK)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10CA390
- 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
- N6165M
- Operator
- Ahart Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Castle Airport (KMER), Merced, CATo Livermore Municipal Airport (KLVK), Livermore, 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 pattern final
- 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 in flight
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after an uneventful cross-country flight, he returned to the airport to practice three landings. The first two landings were normal and uneventful. During final approach of the third landing, the airplane encountered a wind shear and, despite the pilot’s control inputs, the airplane entered a nose dive. The airplane impacted the runway and slid about 40 feet, substantially damaging the airplane’s firewall. The pilot reported no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine prior to the accident. The accident airport’s weather observation system reported at the time of the accident wind from 300 degrees at 12 knots. The pilot stated that the accident could have been prevented by using higher than normal airspeed in gusty wind conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain aircraft control during final approach, resulting in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10CA390
- Event ID
- 20100809X52829
- Case number
- WPR10CA390
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-08-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1a9ac607c47b986aaa476d4e6fb969298408e3ada501b0c6b51e306ada9a8ae5; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:48:44.261Z.