NYC03CA185 · Cessna 172E
Cessna 172E · Accident: hard landing
From Joseph A. Hardy Connellsville Airport (VVS) to Joseph A. Hardy Connellsville Airport (VVS)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03CA185
- 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 172E
- 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
- N5628T
- Operator
- Lisa F. Reinhold · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Joseph A. Hardy Connellsville Airport (VVS), Connellsville, PATo Joseph A. Hardy Connellsville Airport (VVS), Connellsville, PA
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- 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 student pilot had performed 2 takeoffs and landings with no problems. On the third takeoff, after becoming airborne, she thought the airplane was not accelerating as she expected. She lowered the nose and still did not see the acceleration she expected. She said the airspeed was near 60 knots, and as the airplane neared mid-field, she decided to abort the takeoff and retarded the throttle. The airplane hit hard and bounced into the air. She then pushed the control yoke forward and the airplane contacted the runway in a nose low attitude. The nose landing gear collapsed rearward, and a fire developed in the engine compartment as the airplane slid. When the airplane came to rest, the student pilot exited the airplane. A witness reported hearing a "pop" after he observed the airplane level off. Examination of the airplane by an FAA inspector did not find any evidence of a mechanical failure or malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper bounced landing recovery. A factor was the pilot's inadequate flare during the initial touchdown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03CA185
- Event ID
- 20031007X01667
- Case number
- NYC03CA185
- 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: e4dc3ce77356cd29ddbd339eb031b9255f3407baa1e97a60e8993dd912f85052; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:23:03.804Z.