DEN04LA106 · Cessna 182J
Cessna 182J · Accident: hard landing
From Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN) to Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04LA106
- 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 182J
- 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
- N2602F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN), Farmington, NMTo Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN), Farmington, NM
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Flare, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he completed one full-stop landing, one touch-and-go landing, and was attempting a second full-stop landing on runway 25. The pilot stated that during the approach, he heard the tower report to other aircraft that the winds were 240 degrees at 14 knots, gusting to 21 knots. The pilot stated that during the flare, a gust of wind struck the airplane. The airplane climbed 10 to 15 feet and then dropped to the runway. After the airplane struck the runway, the pilot kept it on centerline, completed the roll-out, and brought the airplane to a stop on the taxiway. The impact with the runway collapsed the nose landing gear and buckled the firewall. At 1453, the recorded wind conditions at Farmington were, 280 degrees at 8 knots. At 1502, the winds were 240 degrees at 14 knots, gusting to 21 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate compensation for wind and his improper flare. Contributing factors include the wind shift, and gusty wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04LA106
- Event ID
- 20040722X01040
- Case number
- DEN04LA106
- 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. 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: da98d540d63df1650e466755ca80e8516214cf6f931e80078065088d4a45972a; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:02:02.853Z.