ERA15CA038 · Cessna 172P
ADF Airways Cessna 172P · Accident: hard landing
From Miami Executive Airport (TMB) to Miami Executive Airport (TMB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15CA038
- 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
- N97277
- Operator
- ADF Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami Executive Airport (TMB), Miami, FLTo Miami Executive Airport (TMB), Miami, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 30 years (built 1984)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot had performed three uneventful landings with his instructor on board; his certified flight instructor later stated that the student, "… performed way above the standards needed to show me he would be safe during solo flight." While flying solo for the first time, the student performed one uneventful touch-and-go landing and remained in the traffic pattern for runway 9R. With a calm wind, the student pilot reported that the approach was normal; however, the landing was harder than normal. He continued the takeoff roll for another touch-and-go landing but reported hearing a weird sound. He added power, and believe that was the moment when the nose landing gear tire deflated. He then felt a, "strange movement and I felt the nose falling." He reduced power to abort the takeoff and then heard and felt something touching the floor. After coming to rest he contacted the air traffic control tower and reported what occurred.
Postaccident inspection of the airplane by several FAA inspectors revealed the wings, upper fuselage, cabin, tail, main landing gear, primary flight controls, engine, and engine mount were intact. The nose landing gear inner cylinder was pushed up through the upper housing, and the firewall was damaged on the left, right, and aft sides of the nose landing gear mount. The upper quadrant of the firewall also exhibited a seven inch buckle. Following recovery of the airplane, the engine was started and found to operate normally. The operator also reported that the cabin floor was bent.
Probable cause
The failure of the student pilot to achieve a proper touchdown during a touch-and-go landing resulting in a hard landing and substantial damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15CA038
- Event ID
- 20141031X23604
- Case number
- ERA15CA038
- 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: 4df5f8d88cebc0a9e2f86cc358540cb3c628cc21a2cdda40c72ede0c8be1e57c; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:54:22.906Z.