LAX97LA144 · Aero Commander 100
Aero Commander 100 · Accident: hard landing
From Buchanan Field (CCR) to CA (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA144
- 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
Aero Commander 100
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 100
- 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
- N87770
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buchanan Field (CCR), Concord, CATo CA (no airport)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was landing for the first time at a 1,500-foot-long duster strip, and stated that because of the shortness of the runway and the potential for automobile cross traffic at the other end, he attempted a short field landing. However, the approach end of the runway had a dirt berm across it and it was hard to judge the height. As he approached the berm he added power to clear it, but the plane stalled about 6 to 7 feet agl and landed hard. It bounced and turned left colliding with a metal storage shed.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain minimum control airspeed during the approach. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to maintain directional control after landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA144
- Event ID
- 20001208X07744
- Case number
- LAX97LA144
- 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: 23593875db91683af28163260cf0fa035bcd780896a2c521a144cffaaf5ca29c; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:00:26.787Z.