DFW05FA178 · Piper PA-34-220T
Piper PA-34-220T · Accident: hard landing
From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) to University of Oklahoma Westheimer Airport (OUN)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05FA178
- 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
- 1 · 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
Piper PA-34-220T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N902J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS), Austin, TXTo University of Oklahoma Westheimer Airport (OUN), Norman, OK
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/spin
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airport's tower controller had cleared the 1,118-hour commercial pilot to land on Runway 03 and reported the winds were variable from 090-130 degrees at 8 knots. The pilot responded, "cleared to land if I can get down there." The pilot then experienced a hard bounced landing which resulted in a right propeller strike while approximately 2,248 feet along the 4,747-foot long by 100-foot wide runway. During the pilot's attempted aborted landing, he lost control and impacted the roof of the airport's terminal building. An examination of the wreckage revealed that the landing gear was in the full-extended position and the flaps were in the 25-degree extended position. Continuity was established to all flight controls. No discrepancies were found with the engines or propellers and no pre-impact anomalies were noted with the airframe.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin. A contributing factor was the pilot's attempted aborted landing following a hard landing and propeller strike.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05FA178
- Event ID
- 20050712X00990
- Case number
- DFW05FA178
- 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: 185a4455aa8fd46a222d7ffca0acbcb501af988e63e4f49f9dd61a40f6cb03e8; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:59:08.161Z.