GAA16CA189 · TL Ultralight SRO TL-3000 SIRIUS
Air Associates of Missouri TL Ultralight SRO TL-3000 SIRIUS · Accident: hard landing
From Dubuque Regional Airport (DBQ) to South St Paul Municipal Airport/Richard E Fleming Field (SGS)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA189
- 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
TL Ultralight SRO TL-3000 SIRIUS
- Aircraft type
- TL Ultralight TL-3000
- 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
- N726T
- Operator
- Air Associates of Missouri
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dubuque Regional Airport (DBQ), Dubuque, IATo South St Paul Municipal Airport/Richard E Fleming Field (SGS), South St. Paul, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2013)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he encountered gusty wind conditions and a "sudden low level wind shear" during the landing flare and touched down hard. During the landing roll, the pilot noticed that he could not steer the airplane to the left, but he was able to stop the airplane on the runway. During a postaccident inspection, evidence of a propeller strike was also observed.
The firewall was substantially damaged.
An automated weather observing system, about the time of the accident, at the accident airport reported the wind 330 degrees true at 16 knots gusting to 28 knots. The pilot reported that he landed on runway 34.
The pilot did not report any mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain a proper landing flare in gusty wind conditions, which resulted in a hard landing and substantial damage to the firewall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA189
- Event ID
- 20160413X02953
- Case number
- GAA16CA189
- 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: d6431e5821e9b1e79ec3da83a3fc1e7868d60b6890eaa04bc4cf2c591a8ed065; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:17:33.752Z.