ERA15IA009 · Funk Ralph Velocity XLRG
Funk Ralph Velocity XLRG · Incident: hard landing
From Cobb County International Airport-McCollum Field (RYY) to Cobb County International Airport-McCollum Field (RYY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15IA009
- 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
- Incident
- 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
Funk Ralph Velocity XLRG
- Aircraft type
- Funk Ralph VELOCITY XLRG
- 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
- N301EF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cobb County International Airport-McCollum Field (RYY), Atlanta, GATo Cobb County International Airport-McCollum Field (RYY), Atlanta, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2002)
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- 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
The purpose of the flight was to perform three takeoffs and landings at night. The pilot stated that the first takeoff and landing was uneventful and that, at touchdown, he used aerodynamic braking to slow the airplane by keeping its nose off the runway as long as possible. He added that the second landing was faster, that more runway was used, and that the nose landing gear (NLG) touched down "harder" than during the first landing. After the NLG touched down, the airplane pulled right and developed a shimmy. The pilot subsequently lost directional control of the airplane, and the NLG collapsed. Examination of the fracture surfaces on the NLG revealed features consistent with ductile overstress fracture. The overall fracture pattern was consistent with fracture under a lateral bending load.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control during a hard landing, which resulted in the fracture of the nose landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15IA009
- Event ID
- 20141007X90908
- Case number
- ERA15IA009
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2014-10-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 050d4c86518c8b0f50d433bdbd3a1d5d3a61b78842b7b3f54e210e3f3f8eaa21; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:50:14.147Z.