GAA16CA502 · Arion Skys Open Sport Aviation LIGHTNING
Arion Skys Open Sport Aviation LIGHTNING · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Bomar Field / Shelbyville Municipal Airport (SYI) to Northeast Florida Regional Airport (SGJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA502
- 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 Skys Open Sport Aviation LIGHTNING
- Aircraft type
- Arion Skys Open Sport LIGHTNING
- 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
- N481SL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bomar Field / Shelbyville Municipal Airport (SYI), Shelbyville, TNTo Northeast Florida Regional Airport (SGJ), St. Augustine, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2011)
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot of the experimental light-sport airplane, following a personal flight, he made a straight-in approach to runway 13. He recalled that the tower reported the wind as 070° at 12 knots. During the approach, the airplane encountered "convective turbulence," but he established a stabilized approach over the runway centerline. He remarked that, about 5 ft above the runway, the airplane encountered what he estimated to be a 20-knot or greater wind gust. He reported that the airplane ballooned and touched down on the nosewheel, the propeller struck the ground, and he used differential braking to stop the airplane on the runway. The nose landing gear separated from the airplane, and the engine mounts and the spar box sustained substantial damage.
The METAR at the accident airport indicated that, at the time of the accident, the wind was 040° true at 12 knots. There were no METARs throughout the day at the accident airport that indicated wind gusts.
The pilot reported that there were no mechanical failures or anomalies with the airframe or engine that would have prevented normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA502
- Event ID
- 20160922X85052
- Case number
- GAA16CA502
- 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: f485be756322365b78d90cf1c0eba9df84b01d8bee597badd5b318506182bdf9; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:18:08.344Z.