- Date
- February 27, 1994, 11:00 local (18:00 UTC)
- Place
- Gillette, WY
- Injuries
- 1 uninjured
- Damage
- Substantial damage
- Phase of flight
- Landing
- Aircraft
- N21840Cessna 172
- Weather
- Visual (VMC) · Dawn
- Status
- Completed · report December 2, 1994
- Report
- Approved by Office Director
- FAA report
- 19940227003049A
- Case key
- 41882
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
Was the pilot's inadequate remedial action. Factors include an inadvertent porpoise, and a lack of total experience.
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 pilot, who was on her second solo flight, had successfully completed 13 touch-and-go landings just prior to the accident. During the fourteenth landing, the aircraft began to porpoise, and during the pilot's attempted remedial action, she allowed the aircraft's nose wheel to impact the runway hard enough to cause substantial damage to the airframe.
Factual narrative
On February 27, 1994, approximately 1100 mountain standard time (MST), a Cessna 172, N21840, experienced a hard landing at Gillette-Campbell County Airport, Gillette, Wyoming. The student pilot, who was the sole occupant of the aircraft, was not injured, but the aircraft sustained substantial damage. The local instructional flight, which originally departed the same airport about 90 minutes earlier, was in visual meteorological conditions at the time of the accident. No flight plan had been filed, and there was no report of an ELT activation.
According to her instructor, this was the student pilot's second solo flight. The instructor said that during the flight the student had successfully completed 12 or 13 touch-and-go landings prior to the accident. He stated that the accident sequence began when, during an attempted landing, the aircraft began to porpoise. While attempting remedial action to stop the porpoising, the pilot allowed the nose wheel to impact the runway hard enough to cause substantial damage to the airframe.
Aircraft
- Registration
- N21840
- Reported as
- Cessna 172
- Category
- Airplane
- Serial number
- 17264031
- Airframe hours
- 4,127
- Engine
- Lycoming O-320-E2D, 150 horsepower, reciprocating
- Damage
- Substantial damage
- Flight
- Instructional · Part 91
- Operator
- Gillette Air, Inc.
- Registered owner
- Gillette Air, Inc.
- Airworthiness certificate
- Standard, Utility; Standard, Normal
- Last inspection
- Annual · February 10, 1994 · 47 hours before
- Airport
- GCC · Gillette-Campbell County, runway 16, 7,500 × 150 ft, concrete
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
- 49
- Certificate
- Student
- Medical
- Class 3, Valid Medical--w/ waivers/lim
- Seat
- Left
- Flight hours
- 28 total · 3 as pilot in command · 20 in the last 90 days · 11 in the last 30 days · 4 in the last 24 hours
Weather
- Conditions
- Visual (VMC) · Dawn
- Wind
- 230° at 3 knots
- Visibility
- 20 statute miles
- Lowest ceiling
- None
- Temperature
- 41 °F, dew point 28 °F
- Altimeter
- 29.00 inHg
- Observed at
- GCC
FAA reports on this event · 1
The FAA’s own accident and incident reports, matched to the aircraft by N-number and date.