CEN16CA319 · Cessna 172S
Skymates Cessna 172S · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Arlington Municipal Airport (GKY) to Arlington Municipal Airport (GKY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16CA319
- 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 172S
- 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
- N544SP
- Operator
- Skymates
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arlington Municipal Airport (GKY), Arlington, TXTo Arlington Municipal Airport (GKY), Arlington, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 2000)
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
During a full-stop landing to the 100 foot wide paved runway the airplane hit "very hard and bounced to a very high level". The student pilot did not execute a go-around and reported that on the second touchdown "he tried to hold it off again", but the operating propeller struck the runway surface and the airplane bounced a second time. On the third touchdown the nose gear collapsed, directional control was lost, and the airplane exited the left side of the runway. After digging into the grass the nose gear completely separated resulting in substantial damage to the firewall and the forward fuselage. The student pilot and the operator reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper recovery from a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16CA319
- Event ID
- 20160814X02523
- Case number
- CEN16CA319
- 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: c15bf03661a28f4aa18418cb84d48f757eb408e62ed44c62fdc16ed3dcc59161; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:09:12.732Z.