WPR10CA238 · Cessna 172S
Cessna 172S · Accident: hard landing
From Corvallis Municipal Airport (CVO) to Corvallis Municipal Airport (CVO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10CA238
- 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
- N66083
- Operator
- David Duane Ayres
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Corvallis Municipal Airport (CVO), Corvallis, ORTo Corvallis Municipal Airport (CVO), Corvallis, OR
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot receiving instruction reported that during the proficiency training flight, he was seated in the right front seat position while the flight instructor was in the left seat. Following a normal approach for landing, he felt the airplane begin to sink about three to five feet above the runway and attempted to compensate with flight control inputs. The pilot stated that the "automatic (almost subconscious) reaction was to push in the throttle with his right hand and pull back on the yoke with his left hand slightly," which, due to his right seated position, resulted in his right hand pushing the nose down and his left hand pulling back on the throttle thus reducing power. Subsequently, the airplane struck the ground and bounced back into the air. The pilot initiated a go-around followed by the flight instructor taking control of the airplane and landing uneventfully. Post accident examination of the airplane by the pilot and an airframe and power plant mechanic revealed that the engine firewall was structurally damaged. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper use of the flight and engine controls, resulting in a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10CA238
- Event ID
- 20100514X12600
- Case number
- WPR10CA238
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-05-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 04b6fa57f2eaf8a12b5b42c85867bf9c3930fdf8f2e4a0c5c8a6b5b0cc111355; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:05:19.077Z.