FTW99LA118 · Piper PA-28-140
Split S Aviation Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: hard landing
From Hicks Air Field (T67) to F18 · TX
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99LA118
- 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
Piper PA-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N32458
- Operator
- Split-S Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hicks Air Field (T67), Quinlan, TXTo F18 · TX
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Pilot in command › Flare, improper
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot failed to maintain a proper rate of descent during final approach which resulted in a hard landing. A witness located at the approach end of the runway stated that the accident airplane came in 'hot and fast, hit the nose first and bounced up, nosed over and impacted the nose again' resulting in the nose landing gear separating. The pilot stated that his approach was 'perfect'; however, as the airplane got closer to the runway, its sink rate increased. The pilot stated that the airplane would not respond to his control inputs to try and stop the descent. Flight control continuity was confirmed by the FAA inspector subsequent to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare which resulted in a hard landing and his improper recovery procedures from a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99LA118
- Event ID
- 20001205X00470
- Case number
- FTW99LA118
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: b9837c121d5a21fdf059b261e40b7cbed8a763168534e2ee6f1c55a1f7e30909; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:26:07.581Z.