ERA14CA334 · Cessna 172N
Navy Annapolis Flight Center Cessna 172N · Accident: windshear or thunderstorm during landing
From Easton Airport / Newnam Field (ESN) to Lee Airport (ANP)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14CA334
- 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 172N
- 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
- N7368F
- Operator
- Navy Annapolis Flight Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Easton Airport / Newnam Field (ESN), Easton, MDTo Lee Airport (ANP), Edgewater, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Windshear or thunderstorm
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that she and the student pilot checked the weather conditions prior to departing on an instructional flight, and noted thunderstorms were forecast for the area about 1 hour after their flight was scheduled to be completed. While returning from the flight as scheduled, the flight instructor noted thunderstorm activity to the northwest and strong winds at an airport located about 15 miles north of their destination airport. While on final approach to land on runway 30, the flight instructor noted that the reported winds were from 260 degrees at 10 knots. She continued the approach normally; however, during the landing flare a significant change in headwind caused the airplane to climb. The flight instructor added engine power and pitched up, with the intention of aborting the landing; however, the airplane quickly descended uncontrollably onto the runway. The airplane landed hard and sustained substantial damage to the left wing. Review of weather radar around the time of the accident revealed a line of approaching echos, with a defined gust front ahead of the system. Winds reported at a nearby airport, about 30 minutes before the accident were from 210 degrees at 10 knots, and from 300 degrees at 18 knots, gusting to 29 knots, about 30 minutes after the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent encounter with an unanticipated convective gust front or low-level wind shear while landing, which resulted in a loss of control and subsequent hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14CA334
- Event ID
- 20140709X45953
- Case number
- ERA14CA334
- 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: f62f7a0eb2ece5700839a51860bd428937c1e26992a9ff29a76a1f48db80f239; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:52:11.142Z.