NYC99LA018 · Aero Commander AC-100
Aero Commander AC-100 · Accident: hard landing
From Somerset County Airport (2G9) to Bucks Airport (00N)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA018
- 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 AC-100
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander AC-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
- N5546M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Somerset County Airport (2G9), SUMERSET, PATo Bucks Airport (00N), Bridgeton, NJ
- 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, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Bridgeton, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Approximately 10 miles from the destination airport, the pilot activated the pilot controlled lighting, over-flew the airport and identified the winds as calm. The pilot then made a left downwind entry. He completed the downwind, and base, before turning final approximately 3/4 of a mile from the runway, and 500 feet above the ground. Once on final, the pilot select full flaps and slowed the airplane to 70 mph. The airplane touched down flat, but harder then normal on the turf runway, then rolled approximately 8 feet before the nose gear collapsed. The airplane continued straight ahead for approximately 40 feet then smoothly nosed over. Both the pilot and passenger egressed without injury. The night before the accident the pilot made three takeoffs and landings. Also, the pilot had landed at the accident airport approximately 150 times.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly flare the airplane at touchdown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA018
- Event ID
- 20001211X11337
- Case number
- NYC99LA018
- 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: 2511a2ac31b8f70dc483753efbbe6d9f47d746206d5d7e0ea2a40cf2125133ca; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:25:35.072Z.