ERA13CA146 · Cessna 172P
Eglin AFB Aero Club Cessna 172P · Accident: hard landing
From Destin-Fort Walton Beach Airport (VPS) to Destin-Fort Walton Beach Airport (VPS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13CA146
- 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 172P
- 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
- N98598
- Operator
- Eglin AFB Aero Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Destin-Fort Walton Beach Airport (VPS), Valparaiso, FLTo Destin-Fort Walton Beach Airport (VPS), Valparaiso, 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
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following a brief local flight, the pilot entered the traffic pattern at his home airport. While on final approach to the runway, the pilot noted a gusting crosswind and elected to approach the runway at an airspeed of 70 knots, instead of the typical 60 knots. The airplane touched down on the runway, ballooned to a height of about 10 feet, then bounced twice more before it settled onto the runway. The pilot taxied off the runway and shut down the engine. During the accident sequence, the airplane’s firewall was substantially damaged. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The reported wind at the airport about the time of the accident was a left quartering headwind at 15 knots, with gusts to 20 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane while landing in gusting wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13CA146
- Event ID
- 20130227X35753
- Case number
- ERA13CA146
- 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: 39766d9a7896067c262aabc3b221bbb14bfb1b8ad925283fc3c8501c4668a20f; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:01:03.959Z.