ERA24LA268 · Cessna 305 A
Cessna 305 A · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Elmira Corning Regional Airport (ELM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA268
- 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
- 0
- 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 305 A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 305
- 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
- N5309G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Elmira Corning Regional Airport (ELM), Elmira, NYTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 73 years (built 1951)
- 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 · aborted after 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was concluding a short, uneventful flight from a nearby airport. The sun was setting directly in his line of sight while on final approach to land, with a 60-degree flap setting. The pilot described that he misjudged the landing flare and that the airplane bounced on landing. The pilot attempted to abort the landing; however, the airplane was unable to climb. Subsequently, the airplane veered to the right and then to the left, eventually departing the runway surface and coming to rest inverted in a ditch. During the runway excursion, the airplane’s fuselage, wings, and engine mounts were substantially damaged. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control of the airplane during an aborted landing, which resulted in runway excursion and collision with a ditch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA268
- Event ID
- 20240620194506
- Case number
- ERA24LA268
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2078251df76a4727c7b57700d2250881e1f23c7abd09d15f1b07c6e584310f7a; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:56:32.467Z.