ERA12FA225 · Cessna 501
Cessna 501 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Venice Municipal Airport (VNC) to Macon County Airport (1A5)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12FA225
- 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
- 5 · 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 501
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 501
- 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
- N7700T
- Operator
- Jakubowski Bogdan
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Venice Municipal Airport (VNC), Venice, FLTo Macon County Airport (1A5), Franklin, NC
- 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 · aborted after touchdown
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was not familiar with the mountain airport. The airplane was high during the first visual approach to the runway. The pilot performed a go-around and the airplane was again high for the second approach. During the second approach, the approach angle steepened, and the airplane pitched nose-down toward the runway. The nosegear touched down about halfway down the runway followed by main gear touchdown. The airplane then bounced and the sound of engine noise increased as the airplane banked right and the right wing contacted the ground. The airplane subsequently flipped over and off the right side of the runway, and a postcrash fire ensued.
Examination of the airframe and engines did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions. The examination also revealed that the right engine thrust reverser was deployed during the impact sequence, and the left engine thrust reverser was stowed. Although manufacturer data revealed single-engine reversing has been demonstrated during normal landings and is easily controllable, the airplane had already porpoised and bounced during the landing. The pilot’s subsequent activation of only the right engine’s thrust reverser would have created an asymmetrical thrust and most likely exacerbated an already uncontrolled touchdown. Had the touchdown been controlled, the airplane could have stopped on the remaining runway or the pilot could have performed a go-around uneventfully.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to achieve a stabilized approach, resulting in a nose-first, bounced landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's activation of only one thrust reverser, resulting in asymmetrical thrust.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12FA225
- Event ID
- 20120315X52136
- Case number
- ERA12FA225
- 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: 4d694abba38fff8d29d9e17b4fe4530df659d61715c94a8ff89f737c93b4ce93; retrieved 2026-09-13T22:14:41.843Z.