GAA16CA340 · Cessna 172 K
Cessna 172 K · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From South Jersey Regional Airport (VAY) to South Jersey Regional Airport (VAY)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA340
- 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 172 K
- 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
- N7095G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From South Jersey Regional Airport (VAY), Lumberton, NJTo South Jersey Regional Airport (VAY), Lumberton, NJ
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1969)
- 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
The pilot reported that during landing, the main landing gear touched down first, followed by the nose landing gear. He reported that the nose landing gear tire deflated upon contact with the runway surface. During a telephone conversation with the National Transportation Safety Board investigator, the pilot stated that the main landing gear touched down at airspeed of about 40 knots, and the airplane rolled to the right side of the runway and came to rest about 5 feet from the edge of the runway.
The Airframe and Powerplant mechanic that recovered the airplane reported that the nose landing gear wheel was broken in half and damage was sustained to the upper and lower firewall on both the pilot and copilot sides.
According to the manufacturer's pilot operating handbook:
The stall airspeed for this airplane with flaps down, power off is 49 knots.
The pilot reported that there were no mechanical failures or anomalies with any portion of the airplane prior to touch down that would have prevented normal flight operations.
Probable cause
The pilot's hard landing, resulting in a runway excursion and substantial damage to the firewall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA340
- Event ID
- 20160628X75956
- Case number
- GAA16CA340
- 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: 6da796157303a7a2afb49471f937538bc877ce2efba8eab943b1813e56880efe; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:34:30.680Z.