ERA14CA364 · Cessna 177B
Cessna 177B · Accident: landing area overshoot
From Falmouth Airpark (5B6) to Falmouth Airpark (5B6)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14CA364
- 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 177B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N18509
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Falmouth Airpark (5B6), Falmouth, MATo Falmouth Airpark (5B6), Falmouth, MA
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Landing area overshoot
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he elected to conduct a landing on runway 25 at his destination airport. He stated that the windsock indicated a crosswind, that did not favor either runway. The pilot flew the approach to landing at a speed of 65-75 knots. The pilot realized right before touchdown that he was going to land long and go off the end of the runway. After touching down the airplane veered to the right and struck a runway light then subsequently impacted trees that were located approximately 300 feet off the end of the runway. The airplane received substantial damage to the wings. According to a witness who resided next to the airport he advised the pilot, that he landed with a tailwind and should have used runway 7. Approximately 5 minutes after the accident occurred, an Automated Weather Observing System located 3 miles north of the accident site also reported winds of 080 degrees at 5 knots. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudgment of speed and distance on final approach resulting in a touchdown near the departure end of the runway, a runway excursion, and collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14CA364
- Event ID
- 20140728X73636
- Case number
- ERA14CA364
- 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, coordinates. 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: 022224f8923e2fb8833bf3e284e11c8871eac55e616b946099ff351d21fd58f0; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:01:06.230Z.