WPR15CA093 · Flight Design Gmbh CTLS
Kings County Ca Sheriff Flight Design Gmbh CTLS · Accident: hard landing
From Porterville Municipal Airport (PTV) to Hanford Municipal Airport (HJO)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15CA093
- 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
- 0
- 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
Flight Design Gmbh CTLS
- Aircraft type
- Flight Design CTLS
- 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
- N559KC
- Operator
- Kings County Ca Sheriff
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Porterville Municipal Airport (PTV), Porterville, CATo Hanford Municipal Airport (HJO), Hanford, CA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was on a straight-in approach for landing during touchdown; the airplane landed hard and bounced. The pilot attempted to land the airplane for the second time; however, the airplane's nose dropped, resulting in a second bounce. The pilot made a decision to go around and added power. During the takeoff, the airplane bounced again and then lifted off. The second landing attempt resulted in another hard landing. The pilot initiated another go-around and landed the airplane without further incident. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the firewall.
In the section titled "RECOMMENDATION" in the NTSB Pilot/Operator Report, form 6120.1/2, the pilot stated that the accident could have been prevented if he had more experience flying this type and model of an airplane. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate flare, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15CA093
- Event ID
- 20150128X01747
- Case number
- WPR15CA093
- 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: 332a3e1b3a7e13745e925359095710c948a511e8b9cd1a1f25aaf30bc023ac35; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:03:25.963Z.