CEN23LA398 · Van's Aircraft RV-12 iS
Van's Aircraft RV-12 iS · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Major Gilbert Field Airport (4R5) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA398
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Van's Aircraft RV-12 iS
- Aircraft type
- Van's RV-12
- 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
- N321BT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Major Gilbert Field Airport (4R5), La Pointe, WITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2022)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- 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 pilot was landing the light-sport airplane on the runway when it bounced two times. The nose gear collapsed, the propeller struck the ground, and the airplane came to rest upright on the runway in a nose-down attitude. The two occupants were able to exit the airplane without further incident. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the lower fuselage. A postaccident metallurgical examination of the fractured nose landing gear strut revealed features consistent with ductile overstress fracture. There was no evidence of any pre-existing damage to the nose landing gear strut. It is likely the pilot did not attain a proper landing flare, which resulted in the airplane bouncing twice and subsequently sustaining an overstress fracture of the nose landing strut.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper landing flare, which resulted in a bounced landing and an overstress fracture of the nose landing gear strut.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA398
- Event ID
- 20230905193009
- Case number
- CEN23LA398
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2023-09-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 28be8ba34e86ac0fdace2d8d9a58e3bbce14e5b63297ca04c43d36ecf32b5112; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:05:21.691Z.