Frontier Airlines Airbus A320-251N accident
Airbus A320-251N · Accident: tailstrike during landing
From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (KMEM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA22LA044
- 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
Airbus A320-251N
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A320
- 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
- N307FR
- Operator
- Frontier Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (KMEM), Memphis, TNTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2017)
- 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 · 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
- 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
The airplane experienced a tailstrike during landing at Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, Nevada. The captain hand flew the approach with auto thrust off. He stated that the landing picture looked normal and started the flare about 1000 feet down the runway. However, during the flare, the pitch, pitch alert activated, and the airplane bounced. After the event, the captain checked his seat position and found that it was 2 inches higher than normal, which may have altered his sight picture. Post-flight inspection revealed abrasion damage to the lower fuselage skin, deformation to the aft pressure bulkhead, damage to multiple frame fasteners, and multiple pulled fasteners.
Probable cause
The captain’s failure to maintain proper pitch attitude during landing, likely caused by improper seat position.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA22LA044
- Event ID
- 20211213104393
- Case number
- DCA22LA044
- 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: f36d7f03dd21b2805f66cd991967106a2aa635580132bd69f11c65f3f2f1297e; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:49:31.471Z.