ANC24LA010 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: hard landing
From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (PHNL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC24LA010
- 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
- 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
- N172CN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (PHNL), Honolulu, HITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2020)
- 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 first pilot, seated in the left seat, and the second pilot, seated in the right seat, both flight instructors, reported that the purpose of the flight was to accumulate additional flight time and practice various flight maneuvers. The first pilot reported that while she was performing a simulated, power-off, 180° landing to Runway 4L, adjacent to a large military airplane operating in the traffic pattern of a parallel runway, the accident airplane began a rapid descent while on short final. To arrest the rapid descent, the first pilot said she initiated a go-around by applying full engine power, but the rapid descend continued, and the airplane touched down hard before becoming airborne again. Airport wind conditions at the time of the accident were reported to be, 120°, at 10 knots, with peak gusts to 17 knots, which translates to a quartering, right tailwind. The second pilot reported that, prior to the accident sequence, as the approach to Runway 4L continued, the first pilot decided to lower the nose to gain airspeed and enter ground effect. The second pilot stated that, as the airplane passed through 75 to 50 ft above the runway, the airplane encountered an unusual sink rate, and he reacted by pulling back on the yoke as he yelled “flare” just before the airplane touched down hard. The second pilot reported that the airplane subsequently touched down hard, bounced back into the air, and the first pilot then initiated a go-around. After establishing a climb on the go-around, the first pilot transferred control to the second pilot, who subsequently performed a precautionary full-stop landing to check for damage. During the landing roll, the nose wheel deflated, and the airplane came to a stop on the runway, disabled. A post-flight inspection revealed that the airplane sustained substantial damage to the firewall and fuselage. The pilots reported that there were no pre-accident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The first pilot’s failure to maintain a stabilized approach, in gusty crosswind conditions, in an environment favoring wake turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC24LA010
- Event ID
- 20231227193574
- Case number
- ANC24LA010
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2023-12-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3fd1be8ed8b1f971f475767734f0ae786301453caf2d44d5a2662ae1b43b9f43; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:23:43.406Z.