ERA13CA092 · Liberty Aerospace Incorporated XL-2
Averett University of Danville Va Liberty Aerospace Incorporated XL-2 · Accident: hard landing
From Danville Regional Airport (DAN) to Lynchburg Regional Airport - Preston Glenn Field (LYH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13CA092
- 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
Liberty Aerospace Incorporated XL-2
- Aircraft type
- Liberty Aerospace XL-2
- 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
- N208AU
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Danville Regional Airport (DAN), Danville, VATo Lynchburg Regional Airport - Preston Glenn Field (LYH), Lynchburg, VA
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was returning from a solo cross-country flight, and, just before touchdown, she flared the airplane too high above the runway, and the airplane touched down hard. The student pilot applied full power to attempt a go-around; however, the airplane bounced, the nose landing gear collapsed, and the airplane skidded down the runway eventually coming to rest. Postaccident examination revealed a large hole in the cockpit floor, located just aft of the left seat rudder pedals. The student pilot reported no preexisting mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s improper flare, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13CA092
- Event ID
- 20121218X73402
- Case number
- ERA13CA092
- 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: 02eccbf5ada5198c45eb9c9310efb7f7989645fd4cc0290dba2402b494c7db52; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:38:21.229Z.