CEN14LA351 · Cessna 152
Us Aviation Group Cessna 152 · Accident: aircraft structural failure en route
From Graham Municipal Airport (RPH) to Denton Enterprise Airport (DTO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA351
- 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
- N49785
- Operator
- US Aviation Group
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Graham Municipal Airport (RPH), Graham, TXTo Denton Enterprise Airport (DTO), Denton, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1979)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Aircraft structural failure
- 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 structures
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot and private pilot were conducting a personal cross-country flight. The private pilot, who was flying from the right seat, reported that, while at 3,500 ft mean sea level, about 10 to 15 nautical miles west of the destination airport, he heard a loud "boom." The commercial pilot, who was in the left seat, also reported that he heard the "boom." He subsequently took the flight controls but did not feel or see any anomalies with the airplane. He continued to the destination airport and landed without further incident.
During a postflight examination of the airplane, a hole was found in the top of the right wing near the fuel cap, and a fracture was found near the upper portion of the right wing's rear spar. Further examination revealed that there was corrosion near the wing spar fracture. It is likely that the "boom" heard by both pilots was the in-flight failure of the right wing's rear spar.
Probable cause
The in-flight failure of the right wing’s rear spar.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA351
- Event ID
- 20140710X45539
- Case number
- CEN14LA351
- 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: dbc54d1128e6984aac26bb850d333957997a75c2a5fcb758d71f7971ebb2aaf6; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:53:10.738Z.