ERA22LA339 · Vulcanair V1 0
Delaware State University Vulcanair V1 0 · Accident: hard landing
From Delaware Airpark (33N) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA339
- 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
Vulcanair V1 0
- Aircraft type
- Vulcanair V1
- 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
- N979DS
- Operator
- Delaware State University
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Delaware Airpark (33N), Cheswold, DETo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2019)
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot reported that he was completing his first solo cross-country flight. At the destination airport, he performed one go-around because the airplane was too high. He performed a second go-around as the airplane was not aligned with the runway. During the third attempt, he flared too high. The airplane subsequently landed hard and bounced four times before coming to rest on the runway. The student pilot added that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunction. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that it was substantially damaged due to two fractured engine mounts. Damage to the nosegear and propeller was also observed.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s improper flare, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA339
- Event ID
- 20220727105590
- Case number
- ERA22LA339
- 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, 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: 3aab95b69f0e7a0ba713b4107c822c63c389d5ddca5e51e5f5a2928c3b93f394; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:31:23.925Z.