Spirit Airlines Flight 171
Airbus A321-231 · Accident: dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid during landing
From LaGuardia Airport (KLGA) to Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (KFLL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA05MA099
- 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
Airbus A321-231
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A321
- 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
- N583NK
- Operator
- Spirit Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LaGuardia Airport (KLGA), New York, NYTo Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (KFLL), Fort Lauderdale, FL
- 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 · 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
- Dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid
- 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
- Copilot/second pilot › Flare, improper
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Upon landing, an Airbus A321, experienced a tail strike upon landing. The First Officer (FO) stated that over the threshold at an altitude of about 50 feet, "it just literally felt like we lost inertia." The Captain believed that the flare was initiated too late and was incomplete. The FO stated that before touchdown, he lowered the nose a little bit and the aircraft touched down firmly. The aircraft bounced and the FO believed he again lowered the nose to prevent a tail strike. The Captain remembered that as the nose of the aircraft was lowering prior to the second touchdown, he may have pulled back on his side stick controller slightly to prevent the nose gear from striking the runway at too great a speed. After the aircraft touched down a second time the tailstrike occurred. Information extracted from the aircraft's flight data recorder revealed that both side stick controllers were activated simultaneously during the tailstrike. According to the manufacturer, when both side stick controllers are activated simultaneously (at least 2 degrees deflection off the neutral position) in the same or opposite directions and neither pilot takes priority via the takeover push button, the system adds the signals of both pilots algebraically. Airbus had issued Flight Crew Operating bulletins concerning bounced landings and tailstrikes but the pilots stated that no classroom or simulator training was received to reinforce the meaning and contents of the bulletins.
Probable cause
Following a bounced landing, the pilot in command activated his sidestick controller while the first officer was in control of the airplane, which subsequently resulted in the overcontrol of pitch and a tailstrike. Contributing to the circumstances of this accident were the pilot-in-command's failure to properly activate his sidestick takeover push button prior to his remedial action, and the operator's insufficient emphasis on bounced landing recovery techniques and tailstrike avoidance procedures.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA05MA099
- Event ID
- 20051025X01717
- Case number
- DCA05MA099
- 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: 10f7b91491330b35f6e501320c8352c52f257dbfb893bfd30b22054c7379dd2b; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:58:47.268Z.