GAA18CA228 · Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecna P92 EAGLET
Heart of Virginia Aviation Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecna P92 EAGLET · Accident: hard landing
From Hanover County Municipal Airport (OFP) to Hanover County Municipal Airport (OFP)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA228
- 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
Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecna P92 EAGLET
- Aircraft type
- Tecnam P92
- 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
- N404TA
- Operator
- Heart of Virginia Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hanover County Municipal Airport (OFP), Ashland, VATo Hanover County Municipal Airport (OFP), Ashland, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2010)
- 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
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that, while the airplane was in the landing flare for a touch-and-go landing, the student pilot allowed the airspeed to become too low, and he instructed the student to perform a go around. The student applied full power and retracted the flaps, but the airplane continued to descend, so the instructor "got on the controls with him."
During the go-around, the airplane touched down on the runway hard, bounced, and the instructor reported hearing a "ping" and observed that the right main landing gear was no longer attached. The instructor continued the go-around and entered the traffic pattern; during the approach, he observed the right main landing gear laying on the right side of the runway. He landed the airplane and it veered to the right off of the runway.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage.
The flight instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The automated weather observation station located on the airport reported that, about 36 minutes before the accident, the wind was from 250° at 9 knots. The airplane landed on runway 34.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s improper landing flare and the flight instructor’s delayed remedial action, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA228
- Event ID
- 20180417X24736
- Case number
- GAA18CA228
- 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: 670c8cb4f4495e95b427ecc1608f91b87202ff1d6424d86e36eaf9d91106d852; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:51:30.481Z.