CEN19LA046 · Cessna 120
Cessna 120 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From Emporia, KS to Beaumont Hotel Airport (07S)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA046
- 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 120
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 120
- 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
- N2496N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Emporia, KSTo Beaumont Hotel Airport (07S), Beaumont, KS
- Aircraft age
- About 71 years (built 1947)
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 systems
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight. He reported that, upon landing the airplane on a turf runway, the airplane began to pull right. He applied left rudder to try to keep the airplane going straight. As the airplane continued to pull right, the pilot applied full left rudder and full aft elevator and tried applying the left brake. The empennage rose up, so he stopped using the left brake and just used the left rudder. Subsequently, the airplane nosed over, which resulted in substantial damage to the airplane. The pilot stated that the right brake was locked during the landing. The brake was subsequently unlocked to facilitate moving the airplane from the runway.
An examination of the turf runway revealed surface witness marks consistent with a locked right brake. However, during examination of the airplane, no anomalies were found that would have caused the right brake to lock; therefore, the reason the right brake was locked upon landing could not be determined. Given the available evidence, the airplane likely nosed over during the landing roll as the pilot attempted to compensate for the locked right brake.
Probable cause
The right brake being locked during the landing roll on the turf runway for reasons that could not be determined during postaccident examinations, which resulted in a noseover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA046
- Event ID
- 20181217X50247
- Case number
- CEN19LA046
- 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: d9cadf10b65d403c6309d800f6ab3b26badb0c2eb0f45c6a0f626a8508c0eb20; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:29:58.449Z.