IAD97LA068 · Piper PA-38-112
Wellsville Flying Service Piper PA-38-112 · Accident: hard landing
From Wellsville Municipal Airport - Tarantine Field (ELZ) to Wellsville Municipal Airport - Tarantine Field (ELZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97LA068
- 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-38-112
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-38
- 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
- N2477K
- Operator
- Wellsville Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wellsville Municipal Airport - Tarantine Field (ELZ)To Wellsville Municipal Airport - Tarantine Field (ELZ)
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- 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
This flight was a combined dual and solo instructional lesson. The student pilot and flight instructor (CFI) did 5 takeoffs and landings before the student continued with his solo flight. According to the student, on his sixth landing the airplane bounced hard, and he initiated a go-around. On his next landing attempt, the airplane bounced hard again, but he continued the landing. The CFI, who was observing the flight from the ground, stated that the airplane bounced, then the student flared too high, causing the airplane to stall. According to the CFI, the left wing hit the ground first followed by the left main gear and the nose gear. The student and CFI stated the airplane veered off the runway to the left and came to rest about 80 to 100 feet left of the runway.
Probable cause
the student pilot's improper flare, improper recovery from a bounced landing, and loss of directional control, during the landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97LA068
- Event ID
- 20001208X07730
- Case number
- IAD97LA068
- 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: 05bd708e5d970b14bc10d3e77677496362c2a84f4df4b73db61c96981cc36487; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:55:27.263Z.