GAA18CA461 · Cessna 152
Regal Air Cessna 152 · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From AJ Eisenberg Airport (OKH) to AJ Eisenberg Airport (OKH)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA461
- 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
- N152LT
- Operator
- Regal Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From AJ Eisenberg Airport (OKH), Oak Harbor, WATo AJ Eisenberg Airport (OKH), Oak Harbor, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 37 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
According to the student pilot, his first solo flight was conducted at an airport that he was not familiar with and he was "very nervous." Although his flight instructor had a hand-held two-way radio to communicate with the student, the instructor's two-way radio malfunctioned, and the student was not able to communicate with the instructor during the flight in the traffic pattern.
On final, the student noticed that the airplane was "getting too low, too fast and I added power." When he felt the landing was assured, he reduced the power, and the airplane bounced. He added that the airplane bounced again and, "I knew something was up but at the moment I froze." The nose landing gear wheel struck the runway hard and separated from the airplane, and it then skidded to a stop.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the engine mounts and the right wing.
The instructor reported that the accident could have been prevented if he had provided more training to address the changes in performance given that he weighed 235 lbs and that he was not occupying the right front seat during the solo flight.
The student reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard, bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA461
- Event ID
- 20180727X63057
- Case number
- GAA18CA461
- 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: 4e2a01ba9f536cfcf83d3e6712542531fc23e21ce1f4bac2a2dec649f400da90; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:00:44.816Z.