GAA17CA540 · Cessna 172 N
Cessna 172 N · Accident: hard landing
From Hanover County Municipal Airport (OFP) to Falwell Airport (W24)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA540
- 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 N
- 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
- N5396D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hanover County Municipal Airport (OFP), Hanover, VATo Falwell Airport (W24), Lynchburg, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 airplane approached with "extra speed" and ballooned in the landing flare. He added that, "instantly my training took over" and he applied power to go-around, but then also remembered he could not go around when landing in this direction, at this airport, due to terrain and obstacles. He further added that he then reduced power to idle and "stalled the airplane to the ground" and impacted the remining runway hard. Subsequently, he taxied the airplane to the ramp without further incident.
The ailerons, wings, and firewall sustained substantial damage.
During a telephone conversation with the NTSB investigator-in-charge, the pilot reported that he had flown into this airport numerous times prior to the accident and knew that, "once you get to the powerlines you are committed to landing." The power lines were located about ¼ nautical miles from the runway threshold.
The pilot did not report that there were any preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The Federal Aviation Administration Chart Supplement for the airport stated in part: "Land Rwy [runway] 28 (west) tkf [takeoff] Rwy [runway] 10 (east)." The pilot reported that the landing was on runway 28.
Probable cause
The pilot's unstabilized approach, which resulted in an aborted go-around, an aerodynamic stall, and a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA540
- Event ID
- 20170918X90931
- Case number
- GAA17CA540
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-09-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 663bca4ba3d0d53864b19e8082ec0415475e90eb2fd17689e38040ae3a7b918a; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:51:34.565Z.