ERA14CA354 · Cessna 172P
Civil Air Patrol Cessna 172P · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Hagerstown Regional Richard A Henson Field (HGR) to Hagerstown Regional Richard A Henson Field (HGR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14CA354
- 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
- N97528
- Operator
- Civil Air Patrol
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hagerstown Regional Richard A Henson Field (HGR), Hagerstown, MDTo Hagerstown Regional Richard A Henson Field (HGR), Hagerstown, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 29 years (built 1985)
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was conducting her first solo flight, and stated that during the first landing, all three of the landing gear contacted the runway simultaneously, and the airplane began to porpoise. She aborted the landing and noted that the engine sounded "slightly rougher and much louder" during the climb-out. She also noted that the airplane "struggled" to climb to traffic pattern altitude. The second approach and landing was uneventful, and after disembarking the airplane, damage was noted to the propeller. Further examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed substantial damage to the engine firewall. The pilot reported there were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper landing flare.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14CA354
- Event ID
- 20140724X15928
- Case number
- ERA14CA354
- 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: 9b018a623aacb887b32ccffa5732a4f2d5601d253b0e97014594c7a299248954; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:58:36.729Z.