Republic Airways Flight 5783
Embraer-Empresa Brasileira de ERJ 170-200 LR · Accident: tailstrike during landing
From CVG · Cincinnati, OH to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA25LA286
- 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
- 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
Embraer-Empresa Brasileira de ERJ 170-200 LR
- Aircraft type
- Embraer ERJ-170
- 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
- N224JQ
- Operator
- Republic Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From CVG · Cincinnati, OHTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2008)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Republic Airways, dba Delta Connection, flight 5783 from Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG), Covington, Kentucky, to General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport (BOS), Boston, Massachusetts, was substantially damaged during a tail strike while landing at BOS. There were no injuries to the 4 crew members and 76 passengers on board.
According to the flight crew, the instrument landing system (ILS) approach to runway 22L was normal, until the initial touchdown. The first officer flew the airplane to the final approach fix and then transferred control to the captain, to comply with company procedures for land and hold short operations, which were in place for the runway at the time. The first officer reported that the approach met company standards for a stabilized approach at both 1,000 and 500 ft above ground level (agl). Slight deviations from the glideslope occurred on short final, for which the captain performed appropriate corrections. The first officer recalled that after an initial touchdown the airplane bounced slightly, and the captain added some more back pressure to the control column as the airplane quickly sank back to the ground. The airplane touched down hard, the captain maintained directional control and the remainder of the landing was uneventful.
A review of the flight recorder data revealed that the computed airspeed at the time of the initial touchdown was about 129 knots, and the pitch attitude was about 8°. As the airplane touched down the second time, the pitch attitude was about 9° and increasing, it then rose to about 14° just after the air/ground parameter changed to ground.
According to the manufacturer’s airplane operations manual, the tail cone of the airplane should contact the ground at a pitch attitude of 14.5° with the landing gear struts fully extended, and at 10.5° with the struts fully compressed. The tail likely stuck the ground as the landing gear struts compressed during the second touchdown.
Figure 1. Damage to aft fuselage and tail cone. (Courtesy: Republic Airways)
The weather reported at BOS near the time of the accident included wind from 200° at 12 knots, visibility 10 miles, and a scattered cloud layer at 2,400 ft agl.
Probable cause
The captain’s decision to continue the landing after the bounce and the subsequent misapplication of pitch controls. Contributing to the accident was the ongoing “land and hold short” operations that may have created an urgency to land.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA25LA286
- Event ID
- 20250809200742
- Case number
- DCA25LA286
- 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: a6a67a62390908d78c9b2a97feeaeefa5044d66c8f849e9b094c87509b4eff21; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:11:36.584Z.