LAX99LA185 · Cessna 172R
Cessna 172R · Accident: hard landing
From Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport (TRM) to Imperial County Airport (IPL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA185
- 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 172R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N9897F
- Operator
- George MC Jimsey
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport (TRM), Thermal, CATo Imperial County Airport (IPL)
- 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, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Porpoise/pilot-induced oscillation, encountered
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Inbound to the airport, the pilot requested a landing advisory from the CTAF. They advised runway 14 was in use. As the pilot neared the airport, another aircraft asked for advisories. That aircraft was advised that runway 32 was in use and landed on it. The pilot tried to contact the CTAF to verify runway 32 was now in use, but received no response. She entered right traffic for runway 32 and noted the windsock indicated there was no wind. She overshot the turn to final but corrected to line up on the runway centerline. She flared too high and tried to correct; however, during the landing, the aircraft started to porpoise. The propeller struck the ground, buckling the cowling and firewall. The pilot taxied clear of the runway and shut down.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudged landing flare, which led to an inadvertent porpoise condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA185
- Event ID
- 20001212X18814
- Case number
- LAX99LA185
- 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: 395179d42cdaf1b5c760691e708c3484d8e10c1f24155d6d34b1b4184a11fb7e; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:12:09.677Z.