SEA99LA052 · Cessna 177
Cessna 177 · Accident: hard landing
From S50 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99LA052
- 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 177
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N3564F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From S50To not recorded
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot, with a total of 41 hours of flight experience, including 4 hours of solo time, encountered rough air after take off at the Auburn Municipal airport. He then departed the pattern and after about 15 minutes returned and executed an approach to runway 16 reporting that 'the air had become considerably rougher.' This was terminated in a go-around after which he initiated a second approach utilizing less flap extension and a higher power setting/approach speed. The student reported that just prior to touchdown 'a very strong crosswind gust from the east seemed to lift the plane upward and to the right.' Perceiving that he had insufficient runway available for another go-around, he chose to commit to a landing. He reported that 'the aircraft landed very hard and bounced very high.' The aircraft then departed the right side of the runway. Winds at the time of the accident at an airport eight nautical miles north-northwest were northerly at 13 knots. One hour later they were reported as northerly at 12 knots with gusts to 20 knots. Winds at the time of the accident at another airport ten nautical miles north were westerly at 18 knots. One hour later they were reported as north-northeasterly at 12 knots with gusts to 22 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare. Contributing factors were gusty, crosswind conditions, and the student's minimal overall experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99LA052
- Event ID
- 20001205X00565
- Case number
- SEA99LA052
- 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: 74fe7bcfffddf36a6caa7b21c6ef2c5ead716a6e6c18bf1f3b2b47e74df99f1d; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:28:12.340Z.