NYC07LA175 · Aero Commander 100
Aero Commander 100 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Perkiomen Valley Airport (N10) to Perkiomen Valley Airport (N10)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07LA175
- 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
Aero Commander 100
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 100
- 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
- N3900X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Perkiomen Valley Airport (N10), Collegeville, PATo Perkiomen Valley Airport (N10)
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › 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 purpose of the accident flight was to test fly the airplane following the completion of an annual inspection. The pilot stated that after performing two takeoffs and landings, during the initial climb of the third takeoff, about 60 to 70 feet above the ground the engine lost partial power. After unsuccessfully attempting to remedy the problem, the pilot realized that the airplane would not clear the trees beyond the departure end of the runway, so he retarded the throttle and extended the flaps fully. The airplane subsequently impacted a tree, where it came to rest. A flight instructor and a student observed the accident airplane as it flew in the airport traffic pattern, and witnessed the accident. They took off, and watched as the accident airplane taxied, departed behind them, and also remained in the airport traffic pattern. The instructor and the student watched the airplane as it landed for a third time. Everything about the approach appeared normal, until the accident airplane flared, and "ballooned." The nose of the airplane then came down and the airplane ballooned again at about the mid-field point, before it ballooned a third time. The airplane's nose then "abruptly" pitched down, the airplane touched down "hard," bounced, departed the end of the runway, and struck trees. Another witness described that she saw the airplane bouncing down the runway, before it departed the end of the runway, while still on the ground, and "came up into the air a little" before striking trees. Examination of the airplane following the accident revealed no evidence of any obvious mechanical deficiencies of the engine.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate recovery from a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07LA175
- Event ID
- 20070902X01292
- Case number
- NYC07LA175
- 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: 05650ad5e86c09ce0f664456368ba5131beaea510c3c6473a45659d9b4b67141; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:26:19.397Z.