GAA17CA257 · Nelson Sydney VANS ACFT RV8A UNDESIGNAT
Nelson Sydney VANS ACFT RV8A UNDESIGNAT · Accident: hard landing
From Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB) to Centennial Airport (APA)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA257
- 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
Nelson Sydney VANS ACFT RV8A UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Nelson Sydney VANS ACFT RV8A
- 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
- N832SD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB), Pueblo, COTo Centennial Airport (APA), Englewood, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 2002)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during the landing flare in gusting crosswind conditions, he realized that the descent rate was a "little fast/ heavy," so he "reached to [the] left to add power and smooth out [the] flare." He further reported that he mistakenly grabbed the "red knob" (the mixture control), instead of the throttle, to arrest the descent rate. Subsequently, the airplane continued to descend, bounced hard on the runway, and became airborne again. When the airplane settled back onto the runway, the nose landing gear collapsed, the propeller struck the runway, and the airplane veered off the runway to the left and nosed over.
The fuselage and vertical stabilizer sustained substantial damage.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
An automated weather observation station at the accident airport recorded that, about the time of the accident, wind was from 360° at 8 knots, gusting 15 knots. The pilot reported that the landing was on runway 28.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper landing flare and inadvertent selection of the mixture control, which resulted in a hard, bounced landing during gusting crosswind wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA257
- Event ID
- 20170504X65935
- Case number
- GAA17CA257
- 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: 58ccd10b8659ce4747e8baa5eaf0a0298d539bf88a5eef7dd354d31e36a335e0; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:14:05.932Z.