- Date
- September 4, 1989, 11:00 local (18:00 UTC)
- Place
- Torrance, CA
- Injuries
- 1 uninjured
- Damage
- Substantial damage
- Phase of flight
- Landing
- Aircraft
- N25649Piper PA-38-112
- Weather
- Visual (VMC) · Day
- Status
- Completed · report September 30, 1991
- Report
- Approved by Office Director
- Case key
- 26495
From the NTSB’s public API. By law, NTSB reports can’t be used as evidence in lawsuits over the accident.
On this page
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper flare and improper recovery from a bounced landing, which resulted in an inadvertent porpoise. A factor related to the accident was: the lack of training in recovery from bounced landings from her instructor pilot (CFI).
Sequence of events
NTSB’s coding before 2008: each occurrence and phase of flight, and the causes and factors under it. The codes are defined in NTSB’s coding manual.
Analysis
The student plt encountered a pitch oscillation on her 2nd solo landing that resulted in a collapsed nose gear & other damage to the acft. She rprtd that the acft bounced hard & she elected to lower the nose & reflare the plane instead of making a go-around. A series of hard landings followed until the nose gear collapsed. The student stated that she had not been trained in bounced landing recovery techniques, but that she had been told by her instructor to lower the nose & reflare the airplane in the event she had flared too high during a landing.
Aircraft
- Registration
- N25649
- Reported as
- Piper PA-38-112
- Category
- Airplane
- Serial number
- 38-81A0036
- Engine
- Lycoming O-235-L2C, 118 horsepower, reciprocating
- Damage
- Substantial damage
- Flight
- Instructional · Part 91
- Operator
- Peninsula Aviation
- Airport
- TOA · Torrance, runway 29, 5,000 × 150 ft, asphalt
Matched to the registry by N-number and the event date; the registry’s history has gaps, so older matches can be wrong. Compare the reported make and model.
Flight crew
As NTSB recorded them. NTSB leaves out names.
- Role
- Pilot
- Age
- 33
- Certificate
- Student
- Medical
- Class 3, Valid Medical--w/ waivers/lim
- Flight hours
- 25 total · 18 in this make and model · 24 in the last 90 days · 11 in the last 30 days · 1 in the last 24 hours
Weather
- Conditions
- Visual (VMC) · Day
- Wind
- 290° at 10 knots
- Visibility
- 4 statute miles
- Lowest ceiling
- None
- Temperature
- -0 °F, dew point -0 °F