ATL05CA015 · Cessna 172SP
Cessna 172SP · Accident: hard landing
From Columbia Metropolitan Airport (KCAE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05CA015
- 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 172SP
- 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
- N37CJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Metropolitan Airport (KCAE), West Columbia, SCTo 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
- 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 › Flare, improper
- 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 student pilot stated that during the touchdown, the airplane then "abruptly bounced" on the runway. He stated that he then increased engine power in an attempt to control the descent, but his efforts failed and the airplane bounced on the runway and became more difficult to control. The certified flight instructor of the student pilot, who was watching the flight from the ramp, stated that the on the second landing, the airplane "appeared to touch down hard and begin porpoise effect." The student pilot stated that the airplane then veered left of the runway centerline and departed the runway surface into a grassy area. He stated that he continued to apply right rudder and brakes, but was unable to avoid colliding with a runway sign. When the airplane came to a complete stop, the student pilot shut off the mixture control and fuel supply, retracted the flaps, radioed the tower, shut down the ignition and master switches, and waited for assistance. Post examination of the wreckage revealed that the lower portion of the firewall was buckled, and the nose gear was damaged. The student pilot did not report any mechanical anomalies with the airplane.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper landing flare, inadequate recovery from a bounced landing and failure to maintain directional control during rollout. A factor was the runway sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05CA015
- Event ID
- 20041116X01820
- Case number
- ATL05CA015
- 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: 9f7c430ea9aa0a77f053c0181708a8547e8217fe14a223a61b9f3eb8f5c9ed68; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:35:28.741Z.