LAX99LA250 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: hard landing
From Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT) to Q60
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA250
- 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 172M
- 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
- N73113
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT), CATo Q60
- 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 › Recovery from bounced landing, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot flew over the airport and determined the winds were light. On final approach he set the flaps to 30 degrees and maintained 68 to 70 knots. About 1/8 mile from the runway, he reduced power to idle. He began his flare over the runway numbers and noted the airplane continued to float over the runway. He gently raised the nose and heard the stall warning horn; however, the airplane continued to float. The airplane dropped onto the main landing gear, bounced into the air, came down on the nose gear, and bounced into the air again. The pilot was aware that the nose tire had blown so he added power, kept the control yoke back, and settled onto the runway. He then taxied to a parking spot. A mechanic replaced the nose tire and cleared the airplane for flight. The pilot departed and returned to Fresno. Subsequent inspection revealed the firewall was wrinkled.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudged landing flare and inadequate recovery procedures from the subsequent bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA250
- Event ID
- 20001212X19301
- Case number
- LAX99LA250
- 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: 903f27691db815650e142890fe76db6341228f14c8763a6ce0ed2db1dfc3504f; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:33:44.621Z.