LAX03CA248 · Cessna 172S
Westwind Aviation Cessna 172S · Accident: hard landing
From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (KDVT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03CA248
- 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
- N787WW
- Operator
- Westwind Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (KDVT), Phoenix, AZTo not recorded
- 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, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Porpoise/pilot-induced oscillation, inadvertent
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 porpoised during landing. As a result, the firewall and engine mounts were bent. The student reported that he had been practicing maneuvers in the practice area and was returning to the airport to land. He extended his downwind leg due to traffic in the pattern and entered final approach "a little high." He "flared too high, slowed, and landed flat." Then, he "porpoised airplane and landed nose gear first on [the] second touchdown." He felt the damage occured on the second touchdown. He then performed a go-around, did a second go-around after being too high on final, and landed on the third approach without difficulty. The student did not report any mechanical difficulties with the airplane prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The student's misjudged landing flare and inadvertent entry into a porpoise pilot-induced oscillation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03CA248
- Event ID
- 20030814X01334
- Case number
- LAX03CA248
- 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: f352d1e6456ecdc9cac8520537bc40395c9aaff2a3463b8efca01406bea3bbf4; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:02:21.191Z.