GAA16CA116 · Cessna 152
Riverside Flight Center Cessna 152 · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS) to Durant Regional Airport - Eaker Field (DUA)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA116
- 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
- N5101P
- Operator
- Riverside Flight Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS), Tulsa, OKTo Durant Regional Airport - Eaker Field (DUA), Durant, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1981)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during landing, she reduced the power and after rounding out the airplane "ballooned high." She reported that she relaxed the elevator pressure slightly to hold the airplane in a level attitude, and that the airplane "sank fast and bounced back high several times." The propeller struck the runway, the airplane had a total loss of power, and the nose wheel tire flattened. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the firewall.
The pilot verified that there were no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot stated that the automated weather observing system was reporting wind conditions as 19 knots, gusting to 24 knots from 210 degrees before she entered the airport's airspace. She additionally stated that the crosswind component was more than 11 knots. Approximately five minutes prior to the accident time, the meteorological terminal aviation routine weather report stated wind conditions as 16 knots, gusting to 26 knots from 220 degrees.
As a safety recommendation, the pilot stated that she "should have prepared to go around anytime the approach was not as stabilized or try to land with a higher indicated airspeed or only two notches of flaps instead." She additionally discussed a "hazardous attitude" regarding the landing, with "macho – I thought I had landed successfully in gusty winds as strong as this before" and with "impulsivity – I really wanted to land as soon as possible."
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain pitch control during the landing, resulting in a porpoise.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA116
- Event ID
- 20160201X94211
- Case number
- GAA16CA116
- 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: 63a3b7092c52636d0f4b4d88297b145af2c6b6c6227edc2fd89aac2178010ac0; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:08:04.313Z.