GAA18CA428 · Cessna 172 L
Nashville Flight Training Cessna 172 L · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Music City Executive Airport (XNX) to Nashville International Airport (BNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA428
- 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 L
- 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
- N7880G
- Operator
- Nashville Flight Training
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Music City Executive Airport (XNX), Gallatin, TNTo Nashville International Airport (BNA), Nashville, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1970)
- 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
The pilot reported that, during his solo flight, he made an approach, but the airplane's airspeed was fast. He intended to float along the 8,000-ft-long runway, extending the distance to touchdown, because he wanted to exit at the taxiway near the end of the runway. During the landing flare, he misperceived the airplane's height above the runway because the runway was 50 ft wider than his departure airport's runway. He added that the airplane sank, touched down on the main landing gear, and then bounced. The pilot reported that he panicked and applied back pressure to the yoke, "thinking that it would slow...[the airplane] down." The airplane bounced several times, and he applied forward pressure to the yoke "to get some forward momentum to flare again," but the airplane settled on the runway. During taxi, the pilot felt something was wrong with the nosewheel but continued to taxi to the hangar.
The airplane sustained substantial damage the lower engine mounts.
The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper landing flare, which resulted in a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA428
- Event ID
- 20180717X23051
- Case number
- GAA18CA428
- 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: b1d0fd209de1faf5e63b9bbda89ee0137263a1c95eac8eface377f8806f537bf; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:53:42.101Z.