ERA17LA095 · Cessna 172 R
Clearwater Helicopters Cessna 172 R · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Clearwater Air Park (CLW) to Clearwater Air Park (CLW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA095
- 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 R
- 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
- N2382R
- Operator
- Clearwater Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clearwater Air Park (CLW), Clearwater, FLTo Clearwater Air Park (CLW), Clearwater, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 18 years (built 1999)
- 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
After a preflight inspection revealed no anomalies, the private pilot departed on a local flight. Shortly after takeoff, he elected to return to the departure airport due to adverse weather nearby. He entered the airport traffic pattern and while on final approach with the flaps extended 30°, the airplane encountered a wind gust, which caused the airplane to balloon. The pilot executed a go-around and entered the traffic pattern for the same runway, but he only extended the flaps to 10°. He reported that the touchdown was soft and on the runway numbers. He then taxied to parking and secured the airplane. Surveillance video footage showed the pilot inspecting the propeller after disembarking.
Postaccident examination of the airplane, which had not moved or been operated since being returned by the pilot, revealed damage to the propeller and firewall; therefore, it is likely that the damage was sustained during the pilot's landing due to an improper landing flare.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper landing flare, which resulted in damage to the engine firewall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA095
- Event ID
- 20170127X81526
- Case number
- ERA17LA095
- 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: b119288dfb7c179d596692724c303a20bb5ae48f1c9ef77aa50ea71a0722a542; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:58:19.102Z.