Pilot misjudges runway and lands too fast and too far down it

General Aviation News often reprints excerpts from US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident reports, including this one from October 2009 that involved a Cessna 182 in White Plains, New York where there was substantial aircraft damage but no injuries. According to the accident report, the pilot was attempting a night landing and was told by ATC to expect to use runway 29 at the best forward speed in order to expedite his landing. The pilot looked at his approach charts and noticed that the runway was more than 4,400 feet long. He choose to land with no flaps.

The Cessna 182 touched down past a runway intersection with 2,854 feet of runway remaining to the departure section. However, the pilot could not stop the aircraft as it slid off the runway, down an embankment and then onto a service road resulting in the nose landing gear collapsing. The aircraft’s pilot-rated-passenger would later report that the aircraft’s estimated speed to the runway had been 110 knots.

After the mishap, the pilot learned that the runway’s displaced threshold meant that it only had about 3,164 feet available for landing instead of the 4,400 feet he thought was available. Hence, the probable cause of the accident was ruled the pilot’s failure to land at the runway’s proper spot plus excessive airspeed in order to comply with ATC’s request to expedite landing.