ERA22LA164 · Hartz Paul RV-6A
Hartz Paul RV-6A · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA164
- 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
- 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
Hartz Paul RV-6A
- Aircraft type
- Hartz Paul RV-6
- 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
- N447P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 18 years (built 2004)
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated he was previously aware of the nose-over issue of the various models of the aircraft, and as such was very cautious during landing. He attempted to recover after bouncing on a grass runway but on the second touchdown with aft elevator control input, the nose landing gear dug in and the airplane nosed over, which resulted in substantial damage to the rudder. He indicated that he should have done an immediate go-around as a result of the bounced landing, and not attempted to recover.
According to the photographs and information provided by airplane owner/pilot, the nose gear leg was bent aft about 60° beginning about 2.25 inches from the landing gear mount. Equipment that was attached to the nose gear leg was permanently deformed.
The airplane was equipped with upgraded nose gear leg and nose wheel fork that were specified by Van’s Aircraft Service Bulletin (SB) 07-11-09. Those components were designed to reduce the likelihood of fork axle-to-runway surface contact during nose gear overload conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper landing flare, which resulted in overload bending of the nose landing gear leg and subsequent nose-over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA164
- Event ID
- 20220323104819
- Case number
- ERA22LA164
- 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, cause areas. 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: 830975caf5012d5181947b709fa8af3232fdf67954f8b45b8438e8b34d2fae51; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:03:31.849Z.