ATL97LA070 · Eugene Clements PULSAR
Eugene Clements PULSAR · Accident: nose gear collapsed during landing
From IDL to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL97LA070
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Eugene Clements PULSAR
- Aircraft type
- Eugene Clements PULSAR
- 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
- N1710E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From IDLTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Nose gear collapsed
- 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
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, it was his first flight in this homebuilt airplane. After taking off, he stated there was a 'heaviness' in the left wing that caused him to turn left. After trying to correct it, he returned to the departure airport. He stated he landed fast to combat the left turning tendency, and after touchdown, veered off the side of the runway. The pilot stated he had no flight hours in the last 90 days. Witnesses state that after a fast approach, the airplane bounced three times on the runway. On the last bounce, the airplane landed on the nose gear. The nose gear collapsed, and the airplane veered off the side of the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to correctly recover from a bounced landing leading to the collapse of the nose gear. Factors were the pilot's lack of recent flight time and lack of aircraft familiarity.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL97LA070
- Event ID
- 20001208X07850
- Case number
- ATL97LA070
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 84a981ec9819108bd2488da4d18f0140489b62089186219d853bbe296629eccf; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:27:42.597Z.