SEA07CA077 · Cessna 172S
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Cessna 172S · Accident: hard landing
From Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC) to Kingman Airport (IGM)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07CA077
- 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
- N521ER
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC), Ernest A Love, AZTo Kingman Airport (IGM), Kingman, AZ
- 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, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Porpoise/pilot-induced oscillation, encountered
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 was on a cross-country training flight, landing at her destination, when the airplane porpoised during landing. About 5 miles from the airport, she initiated the descent to traffic pattern attitude. The student pilot stated that due to the late descent, the airplane's airspeed was higher than normal. The airplane touched down and the nose gear dropped. This was followed by a propeller strike on the runway. The airplane porpoised down the runway, incurring additional propeller strikes on the runway, and then came to a stop on a taxiway. During the accident sequence, the firewall buckled. The student pilot stated that there were no mechanical malfunctions with the airplane prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudged flare, which resulted in a hard landing and a porpoise.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07CA077
- Event ID
- 20070411X00399
- Case number
- SEA07CA077
- 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: f876d985ab821c45615161256a2ba55672683e27dbc59c713d4743e6ab0dece0; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:59:49.875Z.