GAA17CA029 · Airplane Factory (PTY) Ltd SLING
Sling Flying Club Airplane Factory (PTY) Ltd SLING · Accident: hard landing
From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ) to Zamperini Field (TOA)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA029
- 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
Airplane Factory (PTY) Ltd SLING
- Aircraft type
- Airplane Factory (pty) SLING
- 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
- N232SL
- Operator
- Sling Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, CATo Zamperini Field (TOA), Torrance, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2014)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The solo student pilot reported that during landing in crosswind conditions, the airplane "porpoised back into the air two or three times, finally striking the nose gear hard." He further reported that the nose gear had been damaged and the airplane veered off the runway to the right.
The engine mounts sustained substantial damage.
The student pilot reported no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The automated weather observing system at the accident airport, near the time of the accident, recorded the wind at 240 degrees true at 16 knots. The student pilot reported that the landing was on runway 29 right.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper landing flare in crosswind conditions, which resulted in a porpoised hard landing and a runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA029
- Event ID
- 20161019X24718
- Case number
- GAA17CA029
- 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: c7985f7e5ac4a68b1b1e91dd76a5227aba88cf1989f11ab41825a974716c2a6b; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:26:07.012Z.