IAD98LA069 · Cessna 182L
Cessna 182L · Accident: hard landing
From Portland International Jetport (PWM) to 9B1
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD98LA069
- 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 182L
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N42770
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland International Jetport (PWM), Portland, METo 9B1
- 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 · Estimated position: the centre of Marlborough, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot made an approach to a runway which was 1,682 feet long, with the winds from 080 degrees at 9 knots. He said that he was a 'little high' on short final and the airplane 'dropped faster' than he wanted it to. The airplane touched down hard and the pilot aborted the landing and landed at another airport uneventfully. After landing, the pilot took the airplane to a Fix Base Operator on the airport for repairs. The pilot stated that no one was notified of the accident because the extent of the damage was unknown. The repair work was pointed out to a Federal Aviation Administration Inspector who was performing routine surveillance. The Inspector determined that the firewall needed replacement, in addition to numerous other wrinkles found on the fuselage.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare. A related factor was the crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD98LA069
- Event ID
- 20001211X10115
- Case number
- IAD98LA069
- 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: a4e3a6ab85c8a9097e7b644541cb76b671f6018b4fed73936e6f7ac8a8039392; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:47:17.513Z.