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NYC08CA301 · Steppling RV-6A

2 Sept 2008 · Toughkenamon, PA, United States

Steppling RV-6A · Accident: landing gear collapse

From New Garden Airport (N57) to New Garden Airport (N57)

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Event

NTSB case
NYC08CA301
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

Steppling RV-6A

Aircraft type
Steppling RV-6
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
N69RV
Operator
Mark Goodman
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From New Garden Airport (N57), Toughkenamon, PATo New Garden Airport (N57), Toughkenamon, PA
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 · landing roll
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
Substantial

Cause areas

  • Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
  • Personnel issues › Action/decision

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

According to the pilot of an amateur-built RV-6A, he experienced a "slight" crosswind from the right while on final approach to the 3,695-foot-long, 50-foot-wide asphalt runway. During the landing flare, the airplane unexpectedly "dropped" and impacted the runway. The airplane then bounced several times, and the nose landing gear collapsed during the last bounce. The airplane continued off the end of the runway and flipped over, resulting in substantial damage to both wings and the fuselage. The pilot reported no mechanical anomalies with the airplane. The winds reported at the closest airport (13 miles to the southeast) at the time of the accident were variable at 3 knots.

Probable cause

The pilot's improper recovery from a bounced landing.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record NYC08CA301
Event ID
20081003X17831
Case number
NYC08CA301
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. 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: 447b7e289f8b6bf1f0d67bd5e0c7e57f4397abfd92fe6cfa17e19e572e44c801; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:18:57.347Z.