Narrative:

I was proceeding to help a club member check out in our club airplane. We had been flying about an hour. I had flown with the pilot several times in years past. The lesson was limited to landings as we had recently done air work. His progress had seemed to erode during the whole flight. After his sixth landing he performed a go around on the 7th. I had told him numerous times to follow his visual cues including VASI lights two white two red to be on proper glide path. During the whole flight he did not seem to be responding to my suggestions and commands. He remarked 'I guess I need to schedule more flight lessons.' on the eighth landing attempt and on final I told him ever more sternly three times that he was low (4 red lights). And finally that he was too slow as well. I attempted to hit the throttle but his hand was firmly on it. We landed short of the runway. When the wheels hit the runway; both tires and wheel pants and one fairing were destroyed. This was a hard lesson for me as until recently I had performed instruction for over 3000 hours with no accidents or incidents. I myself and one other club member are the main instructors for our flying club. In the aftermath the other instructor told me he had no intentions of flying with this particular pilot. He had a history of two previous prop strikes in our club. I realize I had a flawed belief that I could fix anyone and that all members who qualified should be able to enjoy flying this plane our club flagship. I do not make these statements in order to mitigate my complicity in this accident. But my lesson is that a major responsibility of a flight instructor is to inform someone when he is simply not able to safely conduct the performance required of a pilot in command. I myself am going to strive to be a better instructor and avoid this kind of occurrence in the future.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An instructor and the trainee involved reported landing short of the runway causing aircraft damage and blown tires.

Narrative: I was proceeding to help a club member check out in our club airplane. We had been flying about an hour. I had flown with the pilot several times in years past. The lesson was limited to landings as we had recently done air work. His progress had seemed to erode during the whole flight. After his sixth landing he performed a go around on the 7th. I had told him numerous times to follow his visual cues including VASI lights two white two red to be on proper glide path. During the whole flight he did not seem to be responding to my suggestions and commands. He remarked 'I guess I need to schedule more flight lessons.' On the eighth landing attempt and on final I told him ever more sternly three times that he was low (4 red lights). And finally that he was too slow as well. I attempted to hit the throttle but his hand was firmly on it. We landed short of the runway. When the wheels hit the runway; both tires and wheel pants and one fairing were destroyed. This was a hard lesson for me as until recently I had performed instruction for over 3000 hours with no accidents or incidents. I myself and one other club member are the main instructors for our flying club. In the aftermath the other instructor told me he had no intentions of flying with this particular pilot. He had a history of two previous prop strikes in our club. I realize I had a flawed belief that I could fix anyone and that all members who qualified should be able to enjoy flying this plane our club flagship. I do not make these statements in order to mitigate my complicity in this accident. But my lesson is that a major responsibility of a flight instructor is to inform someone when he is simply not able to safely conduct the performance required of a pilot in command. I myself am going to strive to be a better instructor and avoid this kind of occurrence in the future.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.