CEN15LA275 · Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 20 C1
Doss Aviation Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 20 C1 · Accident: hard landing
From Southeast Colorado Regional Airport (LAA) to Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA275
- 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
Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 20 C1
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA-20
- 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
- N919DA
- Operator
- Doss Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southeast Colorado Regional Airport (LAA), Lamar, COTo Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB), Pueblo, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2006)
- 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
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was flying the second of four required cross-country solo flights for his training syllabus. About 53 minutes before the accident, the supervisor of flying (SOF) directed the student to return to his home airport due to convective activity south and west of the airport. The airport tower controller cleared the flight to land, and, about 1 minute before the accident, reported that the wind was 200 degrees at 20 knots, which was the published wind limit for solo flight. As the student turned the airplane from the base to final legs in the airport traffic pattern, the controller reported that the wind had increased to 40 knots due to a thunderstorm gust front.
The student reported that he chose to continue the approach and landing despite recognizing that the wind speed was above the published limit for solo flight because he believed that the SOF and an airborne flight instructor, who had been advising him throughout the approach, would continue to advise him until landing. He added that he thought that he was expected to land unless specifically told to go around or divert. The student was also concerned about the thunderstorm approaching the airport from the southwest and believed the better option was to attempt the landing rather than go around and risk entering the weather. As the student landed the airplane, it porpoised multiple times before sliding to a stop.
Despite the high wind and thunderstorm conditions, neither the SOF nor the flight instructor directed the student to go around or divert to another airport. The flight instructor reported that he was overly concerned with distracting the student while he was on final, and the SOF had left the step desk area to walk outside and evaluate the weather.
The SOF was using an on-line, predictive weather service to assist with launch, recall, and divert decisions. As convective activity increased south and west of the airport during the hour leading up to the accident, the storms moved northeast more rapidly than forecast, which led to the SOF's late recall of the student.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s decision to continue the approach and landing despite recognizing that the wind speed was above the published limit for solo flight, which resulted in a porpoised landing. Contributing to the accident was the failure of the flight instructor and supervisor of flying to direct the student to go around or divert.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA275
- Event ID
- 20150617X55451
- Case number
- CEN15LA275
- 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: 98f36c1ddbf2f7c53b7db2556f7b16b9760d7edae6a1f1bf71646b0e5b9b151c; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:26:08.492Z.