NYC08IA206 · Cirrus SR20
Delta Connection Academy Cirrus SR20 · Incident: landing gear collapse
From Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB) to Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08IA206
- 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
- Incident
- 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
Cirrus SR20
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR20
- 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
- N475DA
- Operator
- Delta Connection Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB), Sanford, FLTo Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB), Sanford, 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 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Landing gear collapse
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While practicing takeoffs and landings with a student, the flight instructor noted a "shimmy" in the nose landing gear during the first three landings, but did not think it was out of the ordinary. During the fourth landing, the student pilot "did not flare enough, which resulted in a three-point landing" and a subsequent "porpoise" of the airplane. The airplane bounced two or three times before he took control of the airplane and taxied clear of the runway. During the next landing, performed by the instructor, the nose landing gear collapsed. Postincident inspections conducted by the operator revealed that the nose landing gear strut weldment had cracked. The incident prompted the flight school to inspect their entire fleet of Cirrus SR20 airplanes, of which nine others exhibited cracking in the same location as the incident airplane. The airframe manufacturer subsequently issued a service bulletin mandating inspections of the nose landing gear strut for cracking. The service bulletin outlined the procedures to detect cracking, and specified corrective action that included replacement of the nose landing gear strut with a redesigned part if cracking over 0.19 inches was observed.
Probable cause
A failure of the nose landing gear strut weldment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08IA206
- Event ID
- 20080710X01003
- Case number
- NYC08IA206
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: bc9eb2aa7a4de6a06aac3a27df56ead68f665f83bbc75b318fe3401277ced2c1; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:52:51.093Z.