LAX08LA121 · Cessna 172R
Cessna 172R · Accident: hard landing
From Buchanan Field (CCR) to Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA121
- 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 172R
- 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
- N2384L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buchanan Field (CCR), Concord, CATo Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL), S. Lake Tahoe, CA
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot rented the airplane from the operator for a cross-country flight. The flight experienced gusty winds during the pilot's first attempted landing on runway 18 at the destination airport, which was located in confined valley in mountainous terrain at an elevation of 6,294 feet. Steeply sloped mountains ring the airport except for the approach path for runway 18. He executed a 360-degree turn to attempt a second approach. During the second approach, he noticed "severely decreasing engine performance and gusty winds." The pilot said he executed another 360-degree turn in order to abort the landing and divert away from the airport; however, the airplane was unable to climb, and he landed on runway 18. The pilot stated that upon landing, "the nose of the aircraft pulled erratically but the landing terminated normally and unassisted taxi was performed." The pilot told an employee of the airport's fixed base operator that the airplane had a flat nose wheel tire and he needed someone to repair it. The employee told the pilot that she had seen him circle and then leave the area, and the pilot said that "he was going to leave and continued to circle but could not gain any altitude to get out so had no choice but to come in." The pilot also told her that "he bounced once before he was able to land" the airplane. The mechanic who was tasked with repairing the flat nose wheel tire found extensive damage to the airplane's firewall and nose gear structure. The mechanic stated that after he found and reported the damage, both the pilot and fixed base operator staff told him that the airplane "had made a hard landing upon arrival" the previous day. Reported winds at the airport near the time of the accident were from 210 degrees at 19 knots gusting to 33 knots. The calculated density altitude was 6,955 feet. The operator stated that this accident could have been prevented by "revised dispatch procedures for aircraft traveling to mountainous areas in adverse wind" and "restrictions on what type of aircraft can fly to high density altitude airports."
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare and subsequent hard landing. Contributing to the accident were the gusty winds and the high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA121
- Event ID
- 20080502X00586
- Case number
- LAX08LA121
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 4a0d7da75fb7f05fb9f8e9469fa09150fff08909f0b3cd217bb52923b45922fe; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:36:04.165Z.