DEN04LA150 · Cessna 172S
McAir Aviation Cessna 172S · Accident: hard landing
From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC) to Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04LA150
- 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
- N802SP
- Operator
- McAir Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC), Broomfield, COTo Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC)
- 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, improper
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, 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 was a CFI candidate and his flight instructor was preparing him to take the flight instructor practical test. He was asked to demonstrate a short field landing. The airplane crossed the threshold at 65 KIAS (knots indicated airspeed) and was flared about 60-61 KIAS. The nose "suddenly pitched down" and the airplane struck the runway "hard." The pilot added full power, retracted the flaps to 20 degrees, and rejected the landing. The airplane vibrated as it climbed 300-400 feet per minute to pattern altitude. The flight instructor assumed control of the airplane, declared an emergency, and told control tower personnel that the elevator was jammed. The instructor used power to control altitude and flew a 2-mile final approach. The engine was secured just before touchdown, and a successful landing was made. Postaccident examination disclosed the propeller had struck the runway, and the nose wheel was crooked. The nose strut was pushed back into the firewall. The elevator and elevator trim, which had been set for landing, were also jammed. No evidence of a pre-existing failure of the elevator control was found.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper flare, and the flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04LA150
- Event ID
- 20041005X01565
- Case number
- DEN04LA150
- 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: bfa0d13fb4e1c5c06c4bf0a8ed89dd696f46442aa32f87e74ccc6f5e5d913490; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:39:56.060Z.