MIA03CA125 · Cessna 172S
FIT Aviation Cessna 172S · Accident: hard landing
From Tallahassee International Airport (KTLH) to Melbourne Orlando International Airport (KMLB)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA03CA125
- 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
- N53352
- Operator
- FIT Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tallahassee International Airport (KTLH), Tallahassee, FLTo Melbourne Orlando International Airport (KMLB), Melbourne, FL
- 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 › Go-around, not performed
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated to an airport operator official that the airplane touched on the right of center line and bounced up with the engine power at idle. The airplane touched down a second time approximately 5 feet off the right side of runway 27L in the grass. The airplane continued to porpoise in the grass, bounced two more times well right of the runway. As the airplane began to porpoise for a third time, it descended toward a drainage ditch that was approximate 6 feet deep. The nose of the aircraft touched down in the middle of the ditch, causing the airplane to flip over, tail over nose. The pilot evacuated the airplane with no injuries.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare and inadequate recovery from a bounced landing. Contributing factors were the pilot's failure to maintain directional control and his failure to execute a go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA03CA125
- Event ID
- 20030707X01026
- Case number
- MIA03CA125
- 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: 517e3066c5229fbda98366dcb44d089ba32c904a52694bd7503c2dc65fa24395; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:08:00.135Z.