United Airlines Flight 1449
Airbus 320 232 · Accident: tailstrike during landing
From Denver International Airport (DEN) to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA09FA004
- 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 320 232
- Aircraft type
- Airbus 320
- 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
- N448UA
- Operator
- United Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Denver International Airport (DEN), Denver, COTo Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), Phoenix, AZ
- 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
- 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
- Tailstrike
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
United Airlines flight 1449, an Airbus A320, experienced a tailstrike on landing. Substantial damage occurred to the underbelly and aft bulkhead area. There were no injuries among the crew or passengers.
According to the pilots, the approach was stabilized, on speed and on glide path, until the aircraft descended below 100 feet above the ground (AGL). Then, the airspeed began to slow below the approach speed of 141 knots, and the aircraft pitch attitude increased. At about 100 feet above the field elevation, the first officer pulled the thrust levers to idle. Shortly thereafter, the airspeed decreased to about 10 knots below approach speed. The first officer stated that he felt a “sense of ground rush” during the flare at about 70 feet and he increased back pressure on the side-stick to arrest the sink rate.
The airplane touched down with a nose up pitch attitude of 12.3 degrees with the main landing gear compressed. The tail strike pitch limit at touchdown with the main landing gear compressed is 11.9 degrees nose up.
Probable cause
The failure of the flightcrew to arrest an excessive sink rate during the flare for landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA09FA004
- Event ID
- 20081027X75039
- Case number
- DCA09FA004
- 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: 5afd2d56d8d0d9cfd94021a2ffa73b69693aee50224be7886fa58151c146b6db; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:30:43.192Z.