DEN93LA087 · Aero Commander 100-180
Aero Commander 100-180 · Accident: hard landing
From 1V5 · Boulder, CO to 2V5
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN93LA087
- 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 100-180
- 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
- N3617X
- Operator
- Carson, Omer L. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1V5 · Boulder, COTo 2V5
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
IN HIS FIRST LANDING ATTEMPT TO RUNWAY 32, THE PILOT USED 30 DEGREES OF FLAPS BUT THE AIRPLANE BECAME UNCONTROLLABLE DURING THE FLARE AND THE LANDING WAS ABORTED. A SECOND LANDING ATTEMPT WAS ABANDONED DUE TO DEPARTING TRAFFIC. ON THE THIRD LANDING ATTEMPT, THE PILOT USED 10 DEGREES OF FLAPS AND A SLIGHTLY HIGHER APPROACH SPEED. AGAIN, THE AIRPLANE YAWED TO THE LEFT AND THE PILOT SAID SLIGHT RUDDER APPLICATION RESULTED IN FULL RUDDER DEFLECTION. THE PILOT SAID HE WAS SLOW IN RECOVERING AND ADDING FULL POWER TO GO AROUND. THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED THE RUNWAY, SLID APPROXIMATELY 100 FEET, AND CAUGHT FIRE. A WITNESS SAID THE AIRPLANE LANDED HARD, BOUNCED, ASSUMED A NOSE HIGH ATTITUDE, STALLED, AND IMPACTED THE RUNWAY. POST ACCIDENT EXAMINATION DISCLOSED NO EVIDENCE OF RUDDER OR OTHER FLIGHT CONTROL DISCREPANCIES. PILOT REPORTED WIND WAS FROM 350 DEGREES AT 10 MILES PER HOUR GUSTING TO 25.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S INADEQUATE COMPENSATION FOR THE WIND CONDITIONS AND IMPROPER RECOVERY FROM A BOUNCED LANDING. THE GUSTY CROSSWIND WAS A FACTOR.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN93LA087
- Event ID
- 20001211X12900
- Case number
- DEN93LA087
- 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: 5eadf8fc6ea20b3e32524b9b062679311b524b9487dbc07a004e76e7d6b61e3d; retrieved 2026-09-23T01:49:51.507Z.