CEN09LA173 · Piper PA-31T
Aero Oro Piper PA-31T · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS) to Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA173
- 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
Piper PA-31T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N171AF
- Operator
- Aero Oro
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), Colo. Springs, COTo Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB), Pueblo, CO
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that while en route, he obtained Automatic Terminal Information Alpha that reported moderate to strong westerly and gusting winds. A Low-Level Wind Shear advisory was also in effect. He maneuvered the airplane for an extended right base to runway 26R and configured the airplane for landing. Due to the reported winds and advisory, he elected to approach 5 to 10 knots faster, or approximately 135 to 140 knots indicated airspeed. The approach and descent were normal, and he made several power changes to maintain airspeed and rates of descent consistent with the reported wind conditions. As he flared for landing, he thought that he saw something on the runway. There was a sudden loss of lift, and he adjusted the pitch slightly up to compensate. The touchdown was "unusually hard" and the airplane bounced. The airplane then became hard to control in the pitch and yaw axes, porpoising "violently" 4 or 5 times before he was able to keep it on the ground and exit the runway. Postaccident inspection revealed that the right wing was buckled, some engine mounts were broken, the cowling was wrinkled, and the engine was drooping from its mounts. Airport personnel drove the length of the runway but found no debris.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare and recovery from a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA173
- Event ID
- 20090223X12126
- Case number
- CEN09LA173
- 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. 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: bfd062e615a07843a19f2234c49af5da3afc2432f01be29533cfa824c778d60e; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:46:26.736Z.