GAA18CA427 · Cessna 152
American Flight Training Cessna 152 · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Immokalee Regional Airport (IMM) to North Perry Airport (HWO)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA427
- 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
- N5551L
- Operator
- American Flight Training
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Immokalee Regional Airport (IMM), Immokalee, FLTo North Perry Airport (HWO), Hollywood, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1980)
- 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
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The solo student pilot reported that, while landing in a crosswind during thunderstorm activity, she feared that a go-around would put her into the storm. She added that the airplane bounced during the initial touchdown. She then applied "a bit of power" to recover, but the airplane porpoised, and the nose landing gear collapsed.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the engine mount.
The director of flight operations for the flight school reported that the student was endorsed for the solo cross-country, that she had received a weather briefing, and that she and her instructor had a briefing and discussion about the airfield and weather before her departure. He added that she was supposed to arrive before the summer storms started, but the storms came early.
The student reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The automated weather observation system at the airport reported that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 140° at 15 knots. The student landed the airplane on runway 10R. The observation further indicated thunderstorm activity and cumulonimbus clouds with occasional lightening in clouds and clouds to ground.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s inadvertent encounter with thunderstorm conditions and her failure to maintain a proper landing flare in a crosswind, which resulted in a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA427
- Event ID
- 20180716X44947
- Case number
- GAA18CA427
- 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: 1aedbb948ad99917cfb6895ed73d2f5e389a85eddb2e9e1126257c904d02878c; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:52:38.710Z.