DEN02LA091 · Boeing D75N1
Boeing D75N1 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Centennial Airport (APA) to FTG · Watkins, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN02LA091
- 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
Boeing D75N1
- Aircraft type
- Boeing D75
- 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
- N64796
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centennial Airport (APA), Englewood, COTo FTG · Watkins, CO
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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
- Dual student › Ground loop/swerve, inadvertent
- Dual student › 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 instructor said they entered the traffic pattern on the downwind leg for runway 17 (8,000 feet x 100 feet, dry asphalt), touched down "slightly tail high and bounced slightly (maybe 6 inches). The student allowed the air[plane] to turn right and bank left during the bounce. As the air[plane] touched down the second time, it swerved hard right and began to ground loop. Full left rudder and brake did not arrest the turn. The air[plane] departed the runway to the right, dragged the left wingtip (lower), turned left, dragged the right lower wing, went up on the nose, and came to rest on the propeller dome and the main gear." Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the lower left wing spar, right lower wing, and upper right wing tip. The left main gear was also damaged extensively.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper recovery from a bounced landing, resulting in an inadvertent ground loop. A contributing factor was the flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN02LA091
- Event ID
- 20020816X01405
- Case number
- DEN02LA091
- 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: fe3a41760c66f6a8ee95799ca1edb6faacc08b7573ad3d87b2cb361da4402fbd; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:30:55.304Z.