ERA12CA581 · Cessna 208B
DST Cessna 208B · Accident: hard landing
From Savannah Hilton Head International Airport (SAV) to Statesboro Bulloch County Airport (TBR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA581
- 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 208B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- 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
- N127AR
- Operator
- DST
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Savannah Hilton Head International Airport (SAV), Savannah, GATo Statesboro Bulloch County Airport (TBR), Statesboro, GA
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the flight instructor, the purpose of the flight was to complete recurrent training in the airplane. While on the downwind leg for a landing on runway 5, the flight instructor configured the airplane for a simulated engine failure maneuver. The pilot said he told the instructor that the airplane was too high for a landing on runway 5, so they agreed that he would land on runway 32.The pilot said that as he turned the airplane onto the final leg for runway 32, the airplane overshot the centerline and it began to descend about 200 feet per minute. About 150 feet above ground level, the pilot added power, but the airplane continued to descend and the left main gear and left wing tip impacted the runway and the airplane bounced. The pilot added full power and executed a go-around. The pilot said that during the go-around he noticed that the left outboard wing was bent and an observer in the back of the airplane reported that the left main landing gear was bent. The pilot said he flew the airplane around the pattern, and after the airplane landed, he noted it was difficult to steer the airplane and the airplane veered off the runway and came to rest in a grassy area. During the hard landing, the airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing. The flight instructor reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate flare, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA581
- Event ID
- 20120927X52818
- Case number
- ERA12CA581
- 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: 657fbc52cfa3fc14c58269eee95e47a5b206c248d5b2ac4065fd63fbbb5a1b72; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:02:50.252Z.