LAX02LA153 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: hard landing
From Nogales International Airport (OLS) to Tucson International Airport (KTUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA153
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- N754LT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nogales International Airport (OLS), Nogales, AZTo Tucson International Airport (KTUS), Tucson, 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 · aborted
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Proper descent rate, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Raising of flaps, not performed
- Pilot in command › Wind information, not obtained
- Pilot in command › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted terrain next to the runway during an aborted landing. The pilot reported that the airplane lost altitude as the result of a down draft while executing a full stop landing on runway 01. The airplane touched down hard and bounced several times. An aborted landing was attempted, but the pilot did not retract the flaps. The airplane continued flying towards the right side of the runway, and was unable to climb over or turn away from the rising terrain into which it ultimately impacted. Both pilots indicated that prior to impact, the engine sounds were normal. Control continuity was established and no mechanical anomalies were found. The density altitude was 5,500 feet msl. Responding officers from the Tucson Airport Police Department reported that the winds were out of the south at 10 miles per hour, with occasional variations in direction from west through east.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to identify the wind direction, which led to an attempted downwind landing approach that resulted in a hard landing and severe bounce. Also causal was the pilot's failure to promptly retract the flaps during the rejected landing after touchdown, which led to a stall/mush condition during the takeoff initial climb and a resultant collision with terrain. Factors in the accident were the high density altitude and the prevailing tailwind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA153
- Event ID
- 20020510X00660
- Case number
- LAX02LA153
- 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, coordinates. 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: 4effa574fdecc61396e5736f3f4b1d024c902234193193375576142537fbeb93; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:44:21.709Z.