ERA18LA184 · Swearingen SX300
Swearingen SX300 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Flagler Executive Airport (FIN) to Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA184
- 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
- 1 · 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
Swearingen SX300
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen SX300
- 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
- N42SX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flagler Executive Airport (FIN), Palm Coast, FLTo Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6), Daytona Beach, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 25 years (built 1993)
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
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 private pilot and pilot-rated passenger were landing at the conclusion of a personal flight. The passenger stated that, during the landing approach, he noted that the wing flaps were down, and three green landing gear lights were illuminated; the airspeed was about 90 knots on final approach. Just before landing, he heard the angle of attack indicator alarm and knew that the airplane had stalled. The airplane landed hard and the left main landing gear collapsed. The pilot initially applied full power to take off again; however, he then reduced the throttle to idle and applied full braking. The airplane slid off the left side of the runway and collided with the precision approach path indicator lights. The airplane continued across the grass until the right wing dug into the ground; it then cartwheeled, came to rest upright, and caught fire. Bystanders assisted the pilot and passenger in opening the canopy and egressing the airplane; the pilot succumbed to burn injuries about one week after the accident. The passenger stated that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions with the airplane, and examination of the wreckage revealed no anomalies.
The circumstances of the accident are consistent with the pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed during the landing flare, which resulted in exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and an aerodynamic stall. The subsequent hard landing resulted in a landing gear collapse and loss of directional control.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed during landing, which led to the airplane exceeding its critical angle-of-attack, experiencing an aerodynamic stall and hard landing, which resulted in a landing gear collapse, loss of directional control, and runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA184
- Event ID
- 20180705X70914
- Case number
- ERA18LA184
- 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: bb3d456143432025c446b9985d12e032a8fca9a8983abbd95ba9ab32a60cf94c; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:43:42.633Z.