ERA14LA235 · Pacific Aerospace Corp Ltd 750XL
DC Skydiving Pacific Aerospace Corp Ltd 750XL · Accident: hard landing
From Warrenton Air Park (7VG0) to Warrenton Air Park (7VG0)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA235
- 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
Pacific Aerospace Corp Ltd 750XL
- Aircraft type
- Pacific Aerospace 750
- 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
- N750SS
- Operator
- DC Skydiving
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warrenton Air Park (7VG0), Warrenton, VATo Warrenton Air Park (7VG0), Warrenton, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2005)
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the commercial pilot, following a skydiving operation, he returned to the airport. During the landing attempt and as the airplane was about 15 ft above ground level, the airplane banked left and the left main landing gear (MLG) then contacted the turf runway, so he immediately performed a go-around. Ground personnel subsequently contacted the pilot via radio to inform him that the left MLG had separated from the airplane. The pilot then performed an emergency landing, and, during the landing roll, the left wing contacted the runway, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing spar.
Examination of the left MLG revealed that three of the lower clamp's bolts were fractured, and an aft outboard bending moment was noted on the clamp piece. Fretting marks indicative of clamp movement were also noted. Although it could not be determined when the fretting occurred, it likely resulted from the initial hard landing. Further, several pieces of a polyurethane-based material were found within the left fuel tank. The fracture surfaces on these materials and on the left MLG bolts exhibited overstress damage consistent with a hard landing. Therefore, it is likely that the pilot improperly flared the airplane, which resulted in a hard landing and the subsequent separation of the left MLG.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing and separation of the left main landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA235
- Event ID
- 20140512X01035
- Case number
- ERA14LA235
- 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: fcf69746fbb2eb317f5971bff7eb23ebefe6dd41506f77d68ec5b94b637279f9; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:36:54.066Z.