ERA17LA026 · Cessna 172 S
Fxe Flight Center Cessna 172 S · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE) to Punta Gorda Airport (PGD)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA026
- 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
Cessna 172 S
- 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
- N497SJ
- Operator
- Fxe Flight Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort Lauderdale, FLTo Punta Gorda Airport (PGD), Punta Gorda, FL
- 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after departing on the local flight, the pilot noticed that the engine oil temperature indicated 245°, or redline, and the engine began to run roughly. The pilot contacted air traffic control and requested to return to the airport. The controller cleared the pilot to land and advised of the wind conditions. Upon touchdown, the airplane bounced and came to rest on the runway, resulting in substantial damage. On-scene examination revealed damage consistent with the airplane impacting the runway on the nose landing gear. Examination of the engine revealed that the vernatherm had failed, which would have resulted in elevated engine oil temperature; however, there were no other engine anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The conditions at the time of the accident included a 50° crosswind between 7 and 14 knots. The airplane's published maximum crosswind component was 15 knots. The circumstances of the accident are consistent with the pilot's improper landing flare while landing in gusting, crosswind conditions, which resulted in the nose landing gear contacting the runway and its subsequent collapse.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper landing flare in gusting crosswind conditions, which resulted in a nose landing gear collapse.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA026
- Event ID
- 20161021X40716
- Case number
- ERA17LA026
- 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, cause areas. 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: ed2ca382fa1c277b1df37bacbbfd076dc8a92a341180302dd387497da7d38e58; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:45:26.674Z.