CEN10LA383 · Cessna 182M
White Sands Soaring Assoc Cessna 182M · Accident: hard landing
From Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (ALM) to Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (ALM)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA383
- 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 182M
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N71784
- Operator
- White Sands Soaring Assoc
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (ALM), Alamagordo, NMTo Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (ALM), Alamagordo, NM
- 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 pilot was returning to land after towing a glider to altitude. The wind was gusting up to 19 knots and shifting. The pilot made two attempts to land, but elected to go around each time due to a shimmy in the main landing gear. On the third attempt to land he switched to another runway, composed of dirt. During the landing, the airplane bounced and he elected to go around. Convinced that was something wrong with the landing gear, the pilot performed a low approach over the runway and asked ground personnel to visually check the landing gear; they verified that it looked normal. The pilot made another attempt to land and, during touchdown, the airplane bounced hard 2 to 3 times. Again, the pilot elected to go around and decided to try another landing on the original runway. After landing, the landing gear continued to shimmy and the airplane veered toward the right side of the runway. As the plane slowed, the pilot was able to taxi the airplane safely back to the ramp. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the firewall was wrinkled, the engine mounts were deformed, and the fuselage was damaged at the waterline. Flight control continuity was confirmed and no anomalies were found with the engine or other airplane systems.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of airplane control during landing, which resulted in a hard/bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA383
- Event ID
- 20100712X84208
- Case number
- CEN10LA383
- 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: e24695b5c74fa8d36461346bd77f7e834ac53c24e91c0916ea91cf0d73ebc3f9; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:41:04.789Z.