LAX84LA347 · Cessna R172E
Cessna R172E · Accident: hard landing
From P16 · Mesa, AZ to E69 · Payson, AZ
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX84LA347
- 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 R172E
- 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
- N42FG
- Operator
- Robert J Swartz · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From P16 · Mesa, AZTo E69 · Payson, AZ
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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
- Check pilot › Stall/mush, inadvertent
- Copilot/second pilot › Airspeed, not attained
- Copilot/second pilot › Altitude, not attained
- Copilot/second pilot › Directional control, not maintained
- Copilot/second pilot › Flare, misjudged
- Copilot/second pilot › Proper descent rate, not maintained
- Copilot/second pilot › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
- Copilot/second pilot › Rotation, premature
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PURPOSE OF THE FLIGHT WAS TO GIVE THE PVT PLT A RECURRENCY CHECKRIDE AS REQUIRED BY THE CIVIL AIR PATROL. THE COMMERCIAL RATED CHECK PLT IS NOT A CFI. ACCORDING TO THE CHECK PLT THE PVT PLT WAS ATTEMPTING A TOUCH AND GO LANDING. THE PVT PLT FLARED TOO HIGH, THE ACFT BOUNCED AND HE FAILED TO RAISE THE FLAPS WHEN GO-AROUND WAS INITIATED. ACFT BECAME AIRBORNE AT A HIGH ANGLE OF ATTACK AT A SLOW AIRSPEED. THE CHECK PLT TOOK CONTROL OF THE ACFT AND THE ACFT SETTLED TO THE GROUND OFF THE RWY. THE ACFT STRUCK AN EMBANKMENT AND A DITCH. THE WIND CONDITIONS AT THE TIME OF LANDINGWERE GUSTY AND BLOWING AS A CROSSWIND IN RELATION TO THE LANDING RUNWAY.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX84LA347
- Event ID
- 20001214X39999
- Case number
- LAX84LA347
- 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: c12e149f5fe893f4c8035f42b475adae89e6de1897c9aa19b502c63999578d78; retrieved 2026-09-23T20:20:46.460Z.