ERA17LA258 · Kubassek David ZENITH 601 XL
Kubassek David ZENITH 601 XL · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Hendersonville Airport (0A7) to Aiken Regional Airport (AIK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA258
- 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
Kubassek David ZENITH 601 XL
- Aircraft type
- Kubassek David ZENITH 601
- 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
- N651JL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hendersonville Airport (0A7), Hendersonville, NCTo Aiken Regional Airport (AIK), Aiken, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2003)
- 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 gear collapse
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that he had recently purchased the experimental, amateur-built airplane and was returning home after completing a prepurchase inspection and an uneventful test flight. During the landing, the nose landing gear (NLG) started "shaking violently," and he responded by pulling back on the yoke, which resulted in a tail strike. The airplane subsequently veered off the runway, and the NLG collapsed. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the firewall, the left wing's leading edge, and the NLG. Examination of the NLG revealed that its lower bearing was fractured, which likely resulted in the pilot's inability to maintain directional control.
Probable cause
The failure of the nose landing gear’s (NLG) lower bearing, which resulted in the pilot’s inability to maintain directional control during landing, a runway excursion, and the NLG collapsing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA258
- Event ID
- 20170723X02735
- Case number
- ERA17LA258
- 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: 212a91016ed8826d072de4ef19126bb20e353692e188e24425ded879a630fe66; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:35:03.619Z.