ERA13LA007 · Ercoupe 415-C
Ercoupe 415-C · Accident: hard landing
From Fairmont Municipal Airport Frankman Field (4G7) to Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA007
- 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
Ercoupe 415-C
- Aircraft type
- Ercoupe 415
- 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
- N93606
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairmont Municipal Airport Frankman Field (4G7), Fairmont, WVTo Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB), Parkersburg, WV
- 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
- 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
The first leg of the student pilot's planned solo cross-country flight was uneventful until he attempted to land at his destination airport. During the flare, as the airplane began to settle, he reduced power and the airplane "dropped," touched down on the main landing gear, then the nose landing gear, and then "hopped." The airplane then touched down again and traveled about 50 feet before the nosewheel separated, and the airplane slid to a stop. Examination of the airplane revealed that the two halves of the nosewheel assembly had separated from each other and multiple fractures existed in both halves. Further examination of the airplane also revealed that the firewall and fuselage had incurred substantial damage. The airplane was manufactured in 1946, and the pilot stated that he believed that the nosewheel assembly might have failed due to fatigue during the landing. However, examination of the nosewheel assembly by the NTSB's Materials Laboratory revealed that the damage was consistent with an overload event.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA007
- Event ID
- 20121005X22815
- Case number
- ERA13LA007
- 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: 672751688b06e39830e9ca6051eb4a684046e780d0899fc1b339a5510217e439; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:05:52.141Z.