GAA17CA171 · Smith Douglas J. Sonex Ltd.
Smith Douglas J. Sonex Ltd. · Accident: landing area undershoot
From 069 · Petaluma, CA to Mercey Hot Springs Airport (CN22)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA171
- 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
Smith Douglas J. Sonex Ltd.
- Aircraft type
- Smith Douglas SONEX
- 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
- N801SX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 069 · Petaluma, CATo Mercey Hot Springs Airport (CN22), Firebaugh, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2008)
- 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
- Landing area undershoot
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The sport pilot reported that he was landing on an airfield and overflew the runway multiple times searching for a wind sock. He watched another airplane land to the south, and he made his approach to the south also. He reported that his altitude was too high during his first approach, so he aborted the landing. He asserted that, "This should have alerted me that there was a tailwind." He flew one traffic pattern and made a second approach with the power at idle and full flaps. He established his approach, but the airplane sank quickly and touched down short of the runway and nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the canopy, the vertical stabilizer, and the rudder.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
According to the Airport Facility Directory, the airfield was equipped with a wind indicator. However, no wind indicator could be located on or near the airfield by the National Transportation Safety Board investigator-in-charge.
Probable cause
The sport pilot’s unstabilized approach with a tailwind, which resulted in touchdown short of the runway and a subsequent nose-over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA171
- Event ID
- 20170306X22248
- Case number
- GAA17CA171
- 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: 89581d440c9bd2f781dd05d5f45ad166c618899bac7785fcb033195a2c7d0ae2; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:04:14.371Z.