FTW02LA188 · Cessna 182Q
Cessna 182Q · Accident: hard landing
From Cavern City Air Terminal (CNM) to Midland International Air and Space Port (MAF)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02LA188
- 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 182Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N5327N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cavern City Air Terminal (CNM), Carlsbad, NMTo Midland International Air and Space Port (MAF), Midland, TX
- 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, 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 student pilot, arriving at her destination, flew around the airport several times to get her bearings. With the runway lights dim, she tried increasing the intensity with the pilot controlled lighting, but was unsuccessful. FAA control tower personnel reported there was no pilot controlled lighting installed at the airport. The pilot also stated the lights on the interstate highway, which borders the airport, were confusing to her. She attempted to land on runway 10, but due to the wind rocking the wings, she aborted the landing. The pilot subsequently landed on runway 16R "with a hard bounce" and taxied to parking. The airplane was then towed and secured in a hangar, at which time damage to the airplane was observed. An inspection of the airplane by an airframe and powerplant mechanic revealed the firewall had been deformed where the nose trunnion attaches to the firewall. An initial on-site examination by an FAA inspector revealed the aircraft had sustained substantial damage during the hard landing. A second FAA inspector who examined the aircraft concluded the damaging force was in an aft and upward direction consistent with a hard nose wheel landing, and not consistent with any sort of side load that could have been applied by improper ground handling. A private firm, commissioned by the pilot to access the damage, concluded the damage was the result of sudden and dramatic side loads on the nose gear during ground movement operations, and not damaged due to an in-flight hard landing.
Probable cause
The pilot's hard landing as a result of her improper landing flare. Factors were the prevailing dark night conditions and the student pilot's lack of total experience in night operations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02LA188
- Event ID
- 20020626X00973
- Case number
- FTW02LA188
- 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: 8dcf8023c4734fb71c2d600226df2dc31d7769023b016bc3893b03483288c8e2; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:49:00.853Z.