ATL06CA025 · Cessna 172S
Cessna 172S · Accident: hard landing
From Mobile Downtown Airport (BFM) to Mobile Downtown Airport (BFM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL06CA025
- 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
- N348SP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mobile Downtown Airport (BFM), Mobile, ALTo Mobile Downtown Airport (BFM), Mobile, AL
- 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
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 an approach was made to runway 32 at the Mobile Downtown Airport, Mobile, Alabama (BFM). The student pilot flared the airplane causing it to balloon, and then allowed the airplane to sink down. The student pilot flared it again, and the stall warning horn went off momentarily. The student pilot eased the elevator slightly forward and the airplane landed roughly. According to the student pilot the airplane landed with more weight on the right wheel than on the left. The airplane slowed down and the student pilot pulled back on the yoke to further slow the airplane down. At this point the student pilot noticed roughness with the flight controls. The student pilot taxied to the downtown air center, and parked the airplane. According to the student pilot there were no problems with the flight controls, and no problems with the airplane during the pre-flight inspection. Post-accident examination of the airplane revealed the flight surfaces were intact. The center section of the airframe, and firewall were buckled. Examination of the propeller revealed it was bent aft.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL06CA025
- Event ID
- 20060113X00069
- Case number
- ATL06CA025
- 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: 2bb5bd3f55321aa43a23a52db1c5e0db583d33654f7ab9a5a8c6581d481e950e; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:12:10.833Z.