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SEA07LA253 · Beech F33A

7 Sept 2007 · La Verne, CA, United States

Beech F33A · Accident: hard landing

From Red Bluff Municipal Airport (RBL) to Brackett Field (POC)

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Event

NTSB case
SEA07LA253
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

Beech F33A

Aircraft type
Beechcraft 33
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
N7298R
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Red Bluff Municipal Airport (RBL), Red Bluff, CATo Brackett Field (POC), La Verne, CA
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
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

  • Pilot in command › Porpoise/pilot-induced oscillation, inadvertent
  • Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, 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 pilot said that his approach to landing was normal, but he flew the base leg a little wide. He reported that his airspeed on short final approach was too fast, and the airplane ballooned during the flare. The airplane landed hard, porpoised, and landed hard again on its nose gear. The nose gear collapsed under the fuselage crushing the engine cowling and bending the keel beam.

Probable cause

An improper flare during touchdown and an inadequate bounced landing recovery. Contributing to the accident was an excessive airspeed and an inadvertent porpoise.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record SEA07LA253
Event ID
20070924X01437
Case number
SEA07LA253
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 2007-09-08.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: c89340c5a185c7639b1795d8bed8e8443075a903a9a9660240f4fd19c454f06d; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:26:39.839Z.