ATL05LA023 · Bellanca 17-31ATC
Bellanca 17-31ATC · Accident: nose gear collapsed during landing
From John C Tune Airport (KJWN) to Sewanee, TN
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05LA023
- 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
- 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
Bellanca 17-31ATC Possible conflict
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 17
- 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
- N4088B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John C Tune Airport (KJWN), Nashville, TNTo Sewanee, TN
- 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 › Flare, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that the airplane touched down normally on the main wheels during landing, but when the nosewheel touched down, the airplane veered "violently" to the left. The pilot's attempt to gain control of the airplane with brake and rudder inputs was unsuccessful, and it veered off the runway and struck a parked airplane. A single, heavy black skid mark extended from the runway centerline, off the left side of the runway, and continued as a gouge through the grass and past the parked airplane that was struck. The accident airplane's nose landing gear lower drag strut assembly was damaged, and the rod end spring assembly was separated into pieces. The mechanic who disassembled and examined the nose landing gear assembly after the accident stated that the overcenter spring on the drag strut may have broken on landing, allowing the nosewheel to retract 8 to 12 inches and making the nosewheel steering inoperative. Metallurgical examination of the lower drag strut assembly and the two separated pieces of the rod end spring assembly revealed no evidence of corrosion or fatigue; the fracture surface features and deformation were consistent with overload.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare during landing, which resulted in the overload and collapse of the nose landing gear and subsequent on-ground loss of control of the airplane (aircraft control not possible) and collision with a parked airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05LA023
- Event ID
- 20041205X01926
- Case number
- ATL05LA023
- 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, coordinates. 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: a04badfad29ca358f42316eaed194340298e207e3471ee2361f92b333d8d05df; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:31:10.074Z.