ERA14CA398 · Cessna 172F
Empire Aviation Cessna 172F · Accident: hard landing
From Henderson Oxford Airport (HNZ) to Henderson Oxford Airport (HNZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14CA398
- 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 172F
- 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
- N8432U
- Operator
- Empire Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Henderson Oxford Airport (HNZ), Oxford, NCTo Henderson Oxford Airport (HNZ), Oxford, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 50 years (built 1964)
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after takeoff, his passengers were uncomfortable in the "bumpy" conditions, so he returned to the departure airport for landing. He said that due to his passenger load and the crosswind conditions, the owner of the airplane advised over the radio that the pilot should perform the landing with flaps set at 10 degrees. The pilot stated that the airplane "ballooned" on the first touchdown, and that the second touchdown was "harder than normal." A witness stated that there was a direct crosswind, and the airplane touched down with then nose pointed 30 degrees right of centerline. The airplane "porpoised" and landed on the nosewheel first a number of times in succession. Inspection of the airplane after taxi and parking revealed cracking and buckling of the wings, fuselage, and engine firewall. The pilot reported, and inspection by FAA inspectors revealed, no mechanical deficiencies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's improper compensation for wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14CA398
- Event ID
- 20140820X42216
- Case number
- ERA14CA398
- 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: 0b4512ea5137819ed1a9a59d2cc63dc60fa9334941b2856fe249df97228b2835; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:39:45.060Z.