United Airlines Flight 1117
Boeing 757-224 · Accident: tailstrike during landing
From Denver International Airport (KDEN) to Newark Liberty International Airport (KEWR)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA22LA002
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- Airline
- 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
Boeing 757-224
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 757
- 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
- N12125
- Operator
- United Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Denver International Airport (KDEN), Denver, COTo Newark Liberty International Airport (KEWR), Newark, NJ
- Aircraft age
- About 23 years (built 1998)
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- Tailstrike
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
United Airlines Flight 1117 experienced a tailstrike while landing at the Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), Newark, New Jersey. The captain was the pilot flying and receiving operational experience refresher (OER) training with a line check airman (LCA) who was the pilot monitoring and the pilot-in-command. All other phases of the flight were uneventful.
According to the LCA, the captain suggested a go-around shortly after touchdown due to a significant pitch up, but the LCA thought the pitch was like the pitch up caused by ground spoiler deployment and advised the captain to continue the landing. However, the ground spoilers had not automatically deployed, and the airplane skipped and then began to bounce. The LCA took control of the airplane and attempted to execute a go-around, but because the engines had previously been placed in reverse thrust for the continuation of landing, the thrust levers would not advance so he elected to land on the remaining runway. According to United, during the LCA’s landing, the ground spoilers deployed normally.
According to the aircraft manufacturer, a review of recorded data from the airplane revealed that prior to landing, the speedbrake lever had not been fully placed in its armed detent, which prevented automatic ground spoiler deployment upon landing. Additionally, operation of the reverse thrust levers to their deployed position would mechanically release the speedbrake lock mechanism and move the speedbrake lever out of the down-and-locked position into the armed detent position. This was evident in the recorded data and was likely the cause of the ground spoiler deployment being coincident with the thrust reverser deployment.
The automatic ground spoiler deployment during the LCA’s landing resulted in an airplane nose-up pitch tendency (which is an expected aircraft behavior) for which the LCA failed to mitigate. As a result, the pitch attitude increased until the tail struck the runway. After the tailstrike, the remainder of the landing and landing rollout were normal with no risk of runway overrun or excursion. A post-flight inspection revealed substantial damage to the aft pressure bulkhead and frames.
Probable cause
The nose high attitude on landing resulted in a tailstrike.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA22LA002
- Event ID
- 20211001104015
- Case number
- DCA22LA002
- 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, coordinates. 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: faaa183d2b2c109d2b93029057bc3b4d033ec55d52684125f211b82af60e7f37; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:36:41.298Z.