CEN23LA148 · Cessna 550
Xceed Management Group Cessna 550 · Accident: hard landing
From Pella Municipal Airport (KPEA) to Wiley Post Airport (KPWA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA148
- 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 550
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 550
- 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
- N550DW
- Operator
- Xceed Management Group
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pella Municipal Airport (KPEA), Pella, IATo Wiley Post Airport (KPWA), Oklahoma City, OK
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had recently completed his initial training, and the accident flight was his first flight in the airplane. The pilot entered the traffic pattern with the autopilot engaged and was told by the co-pilot to “keep it tight.” The autopilot did not command a steep enough bank, and the pilot disconnected the autopilot in an attempt to align with the runway centerline. On final approach about 50 ft above ground level (agl), the airplane was aligned to the right of the runway centerline. The airplane landed hard, bounced multiple times, exited the runway, and impacted a runway sign. The pilot then executed a go-around and landed without further incident at an alternate airport. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing spar. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot reported that prior to and during the flight, challenge-response checklist reading was not utilized between he and the co-pilot, and callouts were not used below 1,000 ft agl.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard, bounced landing, runway excursion, and subsequent collision with a runway sign. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s lack of experience in the airplane, the unstabilized approach, and inadequate crew resource management.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA148
- Event ID
- 20230403106997
- Case number
- CEN23LA148
- 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: 86cc9841ad9fa4995ac6d68095409cfc5fd0248ec533eea4570e79f6e478dfb9; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:28:45.672Z.