FTW00LA203 · Aero Commander 685
Aero Commander 685 · Accident: hard landing
From Kizer Field (4F7) to Pine Bluff Regional Airport, Grider Field (PBF)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA203
- 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 685
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 685
- 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
- N1203N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kizer Field (4F7), Prescott, ARTo Pine Bluff Regional Airport, Grider Field (PBF)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane entered the traffic pattern behind another aircraft, therefore, the pilot extended the downwind leg. Due to the extended downwind, the pilot did not extend the flaps abeam of the touchdown point. The pilot stated that after turning final, the VASI was red over white so he did not extend the flaps, since he was on glide path and the airspeed was 100 knots, which was the recommended speed for final approach. He further stated that 'after touchdown, which was a bit hard, the nose gear collapsed.' Examination of the runway revealed that the airplane touched down on its tail, leaving a 5-foot gouge on the runway. The airplane then touched down on its nose landing gear, leaving a 1,000-foot mark on the runway. The airplane came to a stop upright on the runway. The pilot had accumulated a total flight time of 450 hours, of which 45 hours were in multiengine airplanes, and 6 hours were in the same make and model as the accident airplane.
Probable cause
the pilot's misjudged flare, which resulted in a hard landing. A contributing factor was the pilot's lack of total experience in the make and model of airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA203
- Event ID
- 20001212X21459
- Case number
- FTW00LA203
- 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: e6211c099186a6967301a5e6d76295eb40a91998f704204767d1c35aa572b175; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:42:58.569Z.