ERA15CA222 · Cessna 172P
Freeway Airport Cessna 172P · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Joseph Y Resnick Airport (N89) to Freeway Airport (W00)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15CA222
- 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
- N6155K
- Operator
- Freeway Airport
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Joseph Y Resnick Airport (N89), Ellenville, NYTo Freeway Airport (W00), Mitchellville, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1980)
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the airplane entered the downwind leg for runway 18, and he elected to use 20 degrees of flaps and a "slightly higher airspeed" due to wind gusts. While on final approach, he maintained an airspeed of 65 knots; however, the airplane floated, which prompted the pilot to perform a go-around maneuver beginning about halfway down the length of the runway. During the pilot's subsequent landing attempt, the airplane floated again; this time he lowered the nose. The airplane touched down on the main landing gear and subsequently bounced several times before coming to a stop. The pilot then taxied the airplane to the side of the runway and into the grass and secured the engine. One witness reported that the airplane, while on final approach, was "high and fast" with a nose-down attitude and landed flat. Another witness reported that the airplane landed in a nose-down attitude and bounced 4 or 5 times on the runway before coming to rest. All witnesses reported that the airplane "porpoised" after landing. Photographic evidence revealed substantial damage to the engine firewall. According to the pilot, there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or abnormalities that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper landing flare, which resulted in a bounced landing and damage to the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15CA222
- Event ID
- 20150527X11828
- Case number
- ERA15CA222
- 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: ef79b37f77ecb036681f3bd3c8dc593314365d9f28e75c55da84be28b256d570; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:21:17.000Z.