ERA23LA177 · Diamond Aircraft IND Gmbh DA 42 NG
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Diamond Aircraft IND Gmbh DA 42 NG · Accident: hard landing
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA177
- 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
Diamond Aircraft IND Gmbh DA 42 NG
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA-42
- 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
- N306ER
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2016)
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on approach for a short field landing, the flight instructor reported that the pilot undergoing instruction added power to arrest an excessive rate of descent at his instruction but removed it when the flight descended below 100 ft. The airplane began to descend rapidly and during the flare touched down first on the nose landing gear. The flight instructor took control of the airplane and added power to abort the landing, but he reported the nose dropped and the airplane began to, “…porpoise down the runway while the stall warning was sounding.” He attempted to keep the nose level but the airplane bounced about 5 or 6 times before coming to rest at the edge of the runway near the midpoint. The pilot reported that the approach was, “…a bit steep and fast due to gusty conditions.” He also reported the canopy became unlatched during the porpoising, and he held it down to prevent getting hit by debris kicked up by the propeller. A review of pictures of the airplane revealed it came to rest with the right main landing gear partially collapsed. The top center portion of the fuselage was substantially damaged during the accident. The pilots reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s delayed remedial action, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA177
- Event ID
- 20230403106995
- Case number
- ERA23LA177
- 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: 9f18e5a92e6ff4a7bf826cd915ecbd5fa7d3288973aeb59c4d38f1d28ab7a11f; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:28:39.443Z.