DEN84LA044 · Cessna 152
Denver Air Center Cessna 152 · Accident: hard landing
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN84LA044
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N93271
- Operator
- Denver Air Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flare, improper
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT COLLIDED WITH A SNOW BANK DURING LANDING AND NOSED DOWN. THIS WAS THE STUDENT'S FIRST SOLO LANDING. THE STUDENTTHOUGHT THE LANDING WAS ALL RIGHT EXCEPT THAT THE ACFT KEPT GOING TO THE LEFT IN SPITE OF RIGHT RUDDER. SOME POWER WAS STILL ON THE ACFT. THE INSTRUCTOR THOUGHT THE ACFT LANDED WITH THE NOSE LOW AND SKIPPED BACK INTO THE AIR. IT DEPARTED THE RWY DURING THE 2ND TOUCHDOWN. THE INSTRUCTOR SAID THE STUDENT HAD 10 HRS DUAL AND 27 LANDINGS PRIOR TO THIS FLT. THE STUDENT IS A DEAF MUTE. THE TOWER USED LIGHT SIGNALS FOR LANDING CLEARANCE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN84LA044
- Event ID
- 20001214X45272
- Case number
- DEN84LA044
- 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: 2208667e1c838d6386f6de1074db63d7131242c75aebe95be13f9b96740182be; retrieved 2026-09-23T21:01:06.955Z.