LAX02LA167 · Cessna 172S
Cessna 172S · Accident: hard landing
From Scottsdale Airport (SDL) to Scottsdale Airport (SDL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA167
- 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 172S
- 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
- N3547H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scottsdale Airport (SDL), Scottsdale, AZTo Scottsdale Airport (SDL), Scottsdale, 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
- 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 › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
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 hit hard, bounced, veered off the runway, and the right main landing gear sheared off when the airplane collided with a runway marker sign. The student pilot was practicing touch-and-go takeoffs and landings. During touchdown, the airplane hit hard and bounced back into the air. Upon returning back down onto the runway, the airplane veered to the left. It continued off the runway into a dirt area. The student pilot attempted to turn the airplane to the right, back onto the runway. The airplane's right main landing gear strut collided with a runway marker sign, and the right main landing gear sheered off. The airplane continued veering to the right, across the runway, and departed the right side. The student pilot did not report any mechanical problems with the airplane prior to the accident.
Probable cause
the student pilot's improper recovery from a bounced landing and failure to maintain directional control on the landing roll, which resulted in a collision with a runway sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA167
- Event ID
- 20020530X00777
- Case number
- LAX02LA167
- 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: eb80f2fe79dd71b8a0348aaa34e0f5712cfaf0ff9926378d34a73babc3a84d64; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:55:36.337Z.