GAA16CA473 · Cessna 172 K
Cessna 172 K · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Jesse Viertel Memorial Airport (VER) to Elton Hensley Memorial Airport (FTT)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA473
- 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
- N78242
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jesse Viertel Memorial Airport (VER), Boonville, MOTo Elton Hensley Memorial Airport (FTT), Fulton, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1968)
- 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
- 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 on ground
- 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 the initial touchdown he "got a bad bounce." On the third bounce the nose wheel "gave way and the propeller impacted the ground."
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the firewall.
The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The Federal Aviation Administration has published the Airplane Flying Handbook FAA-H-8083-3B (2016). This handbook discusses porpoising and states in part:
In a bounced landing that is improperly recovered, the airplane comes in nose first initiating a series of motions that imitate the jumps and dives of a porpoise. The problem is improper airplane attitude at touchdown, sometimes caused by inattention, not knowing where the ground is, miss-trimming or forcing the airplane onto the runway.
Ground effect decreases elevator control effectiveness and increases the effort required to raise the nose. Not enough elevator or stabilator trim can result in a nose low contact with the runway and a porpoise develops.
Porpoising can also be caused by improper airspeed control. Usually, if an approach is too fast, the airplane floats and the pilot tries to force it on the runway when the airplane still wants to fly. A gust of wind, a bump in the runway, or even a slight tug on the control wheel will send the air plane aloft again.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper landing flare and subsequent improper recovery from a bounced landing, which resulted in the airplane porpoising.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA473
- Event ID
- 20160908X75856
- Case number
- GAA16CA473
- 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: 014b6da1b77c55b37c999ba5bb908e7d98422bd298e3c7e93ed783b3fcf49f33; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:14:43.281Z.