CEN14CA078 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Columbia Airport (4G8) to Columbia Airport (4G8)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14CA078
- 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
- N93756
- Operator
- Vern Wyman
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Airport (4G8), Columbia Station, OHTo Columbia Airport (4G8), Columbia Station, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1982)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he intended to remain in the traffic pattern and practice take off and landings. Before he departed, he checked the grass/turf runway 36R to determine if it was hard enough to land on, since Runway 36L, a paved runway, was covered by ice. He decided to take off from runway 36L and land on runway 36R. He departed and flew a left hand traffic pattern. He reported that the landing and rollout were normal until the airplane hit a soft spot in the turf, which resulted in the airplane nosing over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings and tail. The pilot reported that there was no malfunction or system failure of the airplane before the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate flight planning and decision to land on the soft grass/turf runway which resulted in a nose over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14CA078
- Event ID
- 20131209X83249
- Case number
- CEN14CA078
- 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, coordinates. 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: 748e42e08756615e181805288c8b197a0a2032c7475c5933db4990a7be4eb0d0; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:10:15.748Z.