ERA14LA152 · Kurtz JAY B RV-9A
Kurtz JAY B RV-9A · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Suwannee Belle Airport (9FL0) to Live Oak, FL (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA152
- 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
Kurtz JAY B RV-9A
- Aircraft type
- Kurtz Jay RV-9
- 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
- N125TK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Suwannee Belle Airport (9FL0), Suwannee Bell, FLTo Live Oak, FL (no airport)
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2007)
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot and the pilot-rated passenger, during the landing at the pilot's home airstrip in the tricycle landing gear, experimental amateur-built airplane, the pilot stated, "I'm coming in too hot." The pilot continued the landing to the turf runway, and, according to the passenger and a witness, the airplane landed hard and then bounced. The passenger stated that, during the bounce, the airplane stalled. Further, the witness stated that, when he responded to the scene to help, he heard the pilot say that the airplane had "stalled." Ground scars and wreckage photographs indicated that, after the stall, the airplane landed nose down, which resulted in the nose landing gear leg folding aft. The folded area then dug into the ground, and the airplane nosed over. The pilot indicated that he believed that a service bulletin to strengthen the nose landing gear and provide greater ground clearance for the nose wheel fork had been incorporated. Although the nose landing gear did not collapse after the initial hard landing and bounce, it could not withstand the excessive bending loads sustained during the subsequent nose-down landing.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper recovery from a bounced landing, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall, a subsequent nose-down landing, and excessive bending loads to the nose landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA152
- Event ID
- 20140311X60834
- Case number
- ERA14LA152
- 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: 0aae135092cc39bb25a62a9a1ff26a2d7fb2eb656da553c544c61cd4e52947fa; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:23:23.907Z.