ERA10CA512 · Cessna 172R
Langley Aero Club Cessna 172R · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Suffolk Executive Airport (SFQ) to Langley Air Force Base (LFI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA512
- 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 172R
- 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
- N429FF
- Operator
- Langley Aero Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Suffolk Executive Airport (SFQ), Suffolk, VATo Langley Air Force Base (LFI), Hampton, VA
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was landing at his home airport at the conclusion of a solo cross-country flight. He stated that when he contacted the air traffic control tower he was offered the option of runway 8, which had a tailwind, or 26, which had a crosswind. He stated that he wrongly chose to land on runway 8. During the landing flare, the airplane bounced and the nose landing gear impacted the runway, resulting in substantial damage to the engine firewall. The student pilot reported there were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with the airplane. At the time of the accident, the wind was from 230 degrees at 11 knots.
Probable cause
The student pilot's inadequate landing flare and improper recovery from a bounced landing. Contributing to the accident was the student’s decision to land with a tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10CA512
- Event ID
- 20101019X25549
- Case number
- ERA10CA512
- 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: 411ad07b047c68f353fa7e654b7e97d443bc92e51872e01af550e7ad922038f5; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:29:32.198Z.