DFW08CA162 · Cessna CE-152
Alpha Tango Flying Services Cessna CE-152 · Accident: hard landing
From Lajitas International Airport (T89) to Castroville, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08CA162
- 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 CE-152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna CE-152
- 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
- N4789P
- Operator
- Alpha Tango Flying Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lajitas International Airport (T89), Castroville, TXTo Castroville, TX
- 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 student pilot was on his second solo flight when the airplane bounced during a hard landing on runway 15. The airplane bounced three times with each bounce harder than the previous bounce. After the third bounce the airplane landed nose gear first, the propeller struck the runway, and the nose gear collapsed. There was substantial damage to the forward firewall. The instructor pilot witnessed the accident and reported the winds as light and variable.
Probable cause
An improper flare during landing. Contributing to the accident was a porpoise induced oscillation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08CA162
- Event ID
- 20080804X01146
- Case number
- DFW08CA162
- 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: e27d450c0a8dcfc34fffa31ed187c973777d98e80c0d9ab06ce8a221a9ca4ad7; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:58:21.619Z.