ERA10CA398 · Cessna 172 S
Panorama Flight Service Cessna 172 S · Accident: hard landing
From Westchester County Airport (HPN) to Westchester County Airport (HPN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA398
- 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
- N1166W
- Operator
- Panorama Flight Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Westchester County Airport (HPN), White Plains, NYTo Westchester County Airport (HPN), White Plains, NY
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated flight instructor (CFI) and student pilot were returning to the airport at the conclusion of a lesson. The CFI stated that the student was flying the airplane, and the landing approach was "stable and normal except for the fact that it was low." The CFI took control of the airplane, added power to avoid landing on the runway's displaced threshold, and transferred control back to the student. The CFI stated that the student reduced power "abruptly," and that the airplane's nose "dropped" and impacted the runway before he could recover. The CFI performed an aborted landing and subsequently landed normally. Later inspection of the airplane revealed damage to the engine firewall. The CFI stated that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with the airplane.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper landing flare and the flight instructor's delayed remedial action resulting in a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10CA398
- Event ID
- 20100804X93715
- Case number
- ERA10CA398
- 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: 82d7cd2d60389d9b93f77b1be3f873f53ef4780774f15081be4d9941f7d60ed3; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:47:48.498Z.