U.A Airways Flight 1733
Airbus 321 231 · Accident: tailstrike during landing
From Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) to Harry Reid International Airport (LAS)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA13FA071
- 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 321 231
- Aircraft type
- Airbus 321
- 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
- N560UW
- Operator
- U.A Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT), Charlotte, NCTo Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, NV
- 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
The flight crew stated that the captain was the pilot flying and the first officer was the pilot monitoring. The captain stated that, once he turned off the autopilot while on the approach to runway 25L, he thought "the winds seemed a little stronger…" than what was reported, and it felt "a little squirrelly." He said he initiated the flare within about 20 feet above the ground and pitched up for the flare, but stated he did not feel any pitch response, so he brought the nose up a little more to arrest the descent. Upon initial touchdown, he estimated that the airplane bounced about 5-10 feet back into the air. On the subsequent touchdown, the airplane's tail struck the runway.
Postaccident investigation revealed substantial damage to the underbelly and aft bulkhead area. The skin was abraded over a large area through its thickness in several areas of the pressure vessel . One frame was fractured along with several fractured shear ties and frame clips.
Probable cause
the captain's improper recovery from a bounced landing which resulted in a tailstrike.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA13FA071
- Event ID
- 20130408X10949
- Case number
- DCA13FA071
- 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: 73f98b3df67a464c4cf80e67597091cd78d892bf617b26003deb6c0a402b8fb4; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:14:27.876Z.