CEN12LA386 · Cessna 140A
Cessna 140A · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Walnut Ridge, AR (private airstrip) to Walnut Ridge Regional Airport (KARG)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA386
- 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 140A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N9497A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Walnut Ridge, AR (private airstrip)To Walnut Ridge Regional Airport (KARG), Walnut Ridge, AR
- 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
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was practicing touch-and-go landings when the accident occurred. The pilot stated that the tailwheel-equipped airplane encountered an "abrupt gust of wind" during the landing flare that lifted the tail, placing the airplane into a nose-low attitude. The airplane subsequently impacted the runway and nosed over onto its back. The pilot noted that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. The pilot reported that during the accident flight he saw several "dust devils" or “whirlwinds” in the agricultural fields surrounding the airport and attributed the wind gust encountered during the landing flare to one of those events. A postaccident review of the available wind data revealed the prevailing wind was from the south at 11 knots, which resulted in a left quartering crosswind of about 7 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control after encountering a whirlwind or dust-devil during the landing flare.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA386
- Event ID
- 20120621X75139
- Case number
- CEN12LA386
- 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: 831be794cc2c229e2a64f53448d8ffb697635781ba27de49e1074ab560a3f9bd; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:35:58.264Z.