GAA15CA052 · Arion Aircraft LLC LIGHTNING LS-1
Arion Aircraft LLC LIGHTNING LS-1 · Accident: hard landing
From Bomar Field / Shelbyville Municipal Airport (SYI) to West Plains Regional Airport (UNO)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA052
- 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
Arion Aircraft LLC LIGHTNING LS-1
- Aircraft type
- Arion LIGHTNING LS-1
- 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
- N332AL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bomar Field / Shelbyville Municipal Airport (SYI), Shelbyville, TNTo West Plains Regional Airport (UNO), West Plains, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2010)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that during an approach to landing in gusty crosswind conditions, the airplane encountered turbulence about ten feet above the runway and suddenly lost altitude. The airplane landed hard, and collapsed the nose landing gear, then exited the right side of the runway and collapsed the main landing gear. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing and fuselage. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
A review of local weather data indicated that there was low level wind shear associated with high based convective activity approximately five miles north of the airport. There were several pilot reports in the area indicating moderate turbulence below 10,000 feet. Additionally, two pilot reports for moderate turbulence below 2,000 feet and low level wind shear were made within an hour of the accident. The National Weather Service issued an Airman's Meteorological Advisory, current at the time of the accident, for turbulence below 10,000 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control while landing in gusty wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15CA052
- Event ID
- 20150430X00434
- Case number
- GAA15CA052
- 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: 0a612491abb3b0130a5ae0fc3b5e2e0b66bd64991d7b7bff4975321a5fdff4b8; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:16:09.473Z.