CEN23LA001 · Cessna 140
Cessna 140 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Salado Airport (2TX) to Burnet Municipal Airport/Kate Craddock Field (BMQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA001
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 140
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N72794
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salado Airport (2TX), Salado, TXTo Burnet Municipal Airport/Kate Craddock Field (BMQ), Burnet, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 76 years (built 1946)
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that a gust of wind caused the tailwheel-equipped airplane to swerve left during landing roll. He was unable to regain directional control of the airplane before it departed off the left runway edge, striking a concrete pad and runway edge light which caused the airplane to nose over. The airplane’s fuselage, vertical stabilizer, and rudder were substantially damaged during the accident. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot reported that the surface wind was calm when he listened to the airport’s automated weather broadcast about 11 minutes before landing. A weather report issued about 5 minutes after the accident included a 4-knot surface wind from the northeast. Based on available weather information, a variable wind direction likely prevailed at the time of the accident that resulted in an unexpected left quartering tailwind during the landing.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll with an unexpected quartering tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA001
- Event ID
- 20221003106036
- Case number
- CEN23LA001
- 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, cause areas. 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: 538f4889c819cf8c9692784b331d21dcbb8ddb5536b37b708d3f96d074f8b05d; retrieved 2026-09-16T16:09:22.264Z.