ERA15CA033 · Cessna 172M
Apoka Aviation and Flight Services Cessna 172M · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Orlando Apopka Airport (X04) to Orlando Apopka Airport (X04)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15CA033
- 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 172M
- 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
- N1533V
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando Apopka Airport (X04), Apoka, FLTo Orlando Apopka Airport (X04), Apoka, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1974)
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the flight instructor, the student pilot was conducting touch and go landings. During an approach to land the stall warning horn sounded and the flight instructor told the student pilot to lower the nose of the airplane. As the airplane touched down it made a sharp turn to the right and the flight instructor announced "my controls" to the student pilot. The airplane "bounced" and contacted the grass to the right of the runway. The student pilot relinquished the flight controls to the flight instructor, who attempted to regain control of the airplane and conduct a go-around. The attempt was unsuccessful; the airplane veered off the left side of the runway, traveled down an embankment and collided with a hangar, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and the right wing. Neither the flight instructor nor the student pilot reported any mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The student pilots improper landing flare which resulted in a hard landing and loss of aircraft control. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor's delayed remedial actions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15CA033
- Event ID
- 20141029X00642
- Case number
- ERA15CA033
- 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: 3af5bffafbd5407f563fb8a4e922378431d7235e5aca3baa9da7a79be967eab8; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:53:46.067Z.