Vanguard Airlines Flight 313
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-82 · Accident: hard landing
From Orlando International Airport (MCO) to Kansas City International Airport (MCI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA170
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Airline
- 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
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-82
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-9
- 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
- N140NJ
- Operator
- Vanguard Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando International Airport (MCO), Orlando, FLTo Kansas City International Airport (MCI)
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Check pilot › Remedial action, not performed
- Pilot in command › Flare, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was discovered with substantial damage to its tailskid and adjacent structure during a postflight maintenance inspection. The flight served as captain initial operating experience for the first officer who was seated in the left seat. The captain and company check airman for the flight was seated in the right seat. A jump seat rider seated in the forward cabin stated that the airplane appeared to level off and start a flare a little high. A correction was then made to reduce the pitch attitude to continue the descent. There appeared to be a high sink rate, an additional pitch change was made resulting in a firm landing.
Probable cause
The inadequate flare by the flying pilot and the remedial action not performed by the company check airman.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA170
- Event ID
- 20020621X00955
- Case number
- CHI02LA170
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-06-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ff3326b9de673ac5dbff7c60c4e72c99bb0beff38cfdc0b651c43dda140bc4fa; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:01:36.106Z.