NYC99LA016 · Piper PA-34-200
Piper PA-34-200 · Accident: hard landing
From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR) to N66
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA016
- 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-34-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N55697
- Operator
- James J. Hahn · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR), Danbury, CTTo N66
- 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
- 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 airplane was landing on runway 24. A witness observed the airplane contact the runway, bounce approximately 15 feet in the air, and land 'violently.' Examination of the wreckage did not disclose evidence of any pre-impact malfunctions of the airframe or engine. The nose gear strut had been driven up through the fuselage, and extended 6 to 8 inches above the fuselage in the vicinity of the windshield. Winds reported at an airport about 45 miles south-southwest of the accident site, were from 330 degrees at 6 knots. A pilot who landed 10 minutes before the accident stated the winds were from 300-310 degrees at 5-8 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare which resulted in a hard landing. A factor in the accident was the crosswind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA016
- Event ID
- 20001211X11335
- Case number
- NYC99LA016
- 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: 8e279097ecb987de466202390f6fd4334d9f7143100db7117cf5108b54019075; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:26:40.709Z.