WPR11CA470 · Piper PA-28RT-201
Chandler Air Service Piper PA-28RT-201 · Accident: hard landing
From Chandler Municipal Airport (CHD) to Chandler Municipal Airport (CHD)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11CA470
- 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
Piper PA-28RT-201
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N8056B
- Operator
- Chandler Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chandler Municipal Airport (CHD), Chandler, AZTo Chandler Municipal Airport (CHD), Chandler, AZ
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, the certified flight instructor (CFI) and pilot-undergoing-instruction (PUI) completed the landing checklist, but delayed the landing gear extension because they were conducting a 180-degree power-off approach. On final approach, as they were preparing to extend the landing gear, the air traffic controller told them to conduct a go-around because the landing gear was not extended. They extended the landing gear, and the CFI verified three green lights. He then requested permission to land and the tower controller cleared the airplane to land. As the airplane approached the runway, a high sink rate developed. The CFI told the PUI to add power, and the CFI simultaneously started to move the throttle control forward. The CFI said that his hand slipped past the PUI's hand, and he reached again to push the throttle forward when the airplane touched down hard on the runway. They aborted the landing, conducted a low approach to verify the position of the landing gear, and landed uneventfully. A postaccident examination revealed rib damage to the left wing. The CFI reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The certified flight instructor's and pilot-undergoing-instruction's improper flare, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11CA470
- Event ID
- 20110928X53516
- Case number
- WPR11CA470
- 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: 9d61348af90f129d66d03ecbbca80b62eca262eb27a11020d316113d71c7a36e; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:47:27.016Z.