ERA21LA092 · Cessna 172S
WIFA (Washington International Flight Academy) Cessna 172S · Accident: hard landing
From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA092
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 172S
- 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
- N505LP
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI), Gaithersburg, MDTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 20 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was for the pilot to practice crosswind landings, and she described experiencing gusty wind conditions on her arrival at the destination airport. She believed that the wind conditions that prevailed at the time would have resulted in a direct left crosswind of 20 knots (the wind conditions recorded by the airport’s automated weather observation system indicated that a crosswind of 16 knots, gusting to 29 knots prevailed about the time of the accident). While on final approach, and with 20° of flaps extended, she maintained a normal approach speed plus an additional 7 knots. During the landing flare, a gust of wind struck the airplane. The airplane then struck the ground, ballooned back into the air, and landed hard. After landing, she taxied to the ramp and secured it. The lower portion of the airplane’s fuselage was substantially damaged during the accident. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The Pilot’s Operating Handbook and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Approved Airplane Flight Manual specified the maximum demonstrated crosswind velocity for the airplane was 15 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to land the airplane in crosswind conditions that exceeded the airplane’s maximum demonstrated crosswind velocity.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA092
- Event ID
- 20201229102473
- Case number
- ERA21LA092
- 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: 1aade86bcb9c0334771ea0f3a07397be219a0633be1b25e53884736231cb82a5; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:31:54.717Z.