ERA25LA306 · Cessna 172 S
Cessna 172 S · Accident: hard landing
From Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA306
- 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 172 S
- 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
- N6208C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU), Raleigh/Durham, NCTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2008)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was returning to his home airport at night following a personal cross-country flight. He reported that before departure, he completed the preflight and before takeoff checks with no anomalies noted. The takeoff, enroute, and approach phases of the flight were uneventful. He stated that after completing a practice instrument approach, and during the landing flare, the elevator control was restricted and not fully effective. The airplane subsequently touched down flat, and during taxi to parking, the pilot noted a “wobbly” nosewheel. After shutdown, he observed damage to the nosewheel, restricted elevator control movement, and abnormal trim wheel operation.
Examination of the airplane by the operator and an FAA inspector revealed that the airplane sustained substantial damage to firewall and lower fuselage. The inspector noted that the elevator control pivot point near the lower fuselage impact damage was bent, which restricted the elevator control yoke movement. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Due to the pilot’s reported preflight flight control checks, which would have confirmed free and correct movement, and the postaccident examination that revealed no mechanical anomalies, it is likely that the elevator control binding resulted from damage sustained during the hard landing.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate landing flare at night, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA306
- Event ID
- 20250820200825
- Case number
- ERA25LA306
- 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: dd18f3b554da5fc66fb87c3f3d54f253594b48ae58cd7f5510a44908fde9019e; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:14:20.019Z.