ERA10CA326 · Cessna 172 S
Epic Aviation Cessna 172 S · Accident: hard landing
From New Smyrna Beach Municipal Airport (EVB) to New Smyrna Beach Municipal Airport (EVB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA326
- 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 172 S
- 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
- N62568
- Operator
- Epic Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Smyrna Beach Municipal Airport (EVB), New Smyrna Beach, FLTo New Smyrna Beach Municipal Airport (EVB), New Smyrna Beach, FL
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that after an uneventful local flight in the practice area, the student pilot and he returned to the airport for some landings. During the student pilot’s first landing, he flared too high and went around. The flight instructor demonstrated the subsequent landing and takeoff. He then transferred control of the airplane back to the student pilot, who flew the next traffic pattern and landing attempt. During the landing flare, the student pilot "abruptly" moved the yoke full forward. “My reaction time was not sufficient to completely correct the control inputs, which resulted in a hard nose wheel landing, followed by a pronounced bounce." The flight instructor aborted the landing, and the airplane performed as normally expected. The flight instructor then requested that the tower controllers look at the nose landing gear in flight and they reported no anomalies. After landing, the flight instructor realized that the nose wheel was flat. Upon further inspection by maintenance personnel, it was discovered that the engine firewall was wrinkled and required major repair.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s improper landing flare, and the flight instructor's delayed remedial action.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10CA326
- Event ID
- 20100623X90605
- Case number
- ERA10CA326
- 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: a0d07b5655c5e129de90dc7c5cf2ef7cb74d059003d71f0200b9d3de84c4edef; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:29:22.439Z.