WPR26LA143 · Paul D Cannon Kitfox Light Squared
Paul D Cannon Kitfox Light Squared · Accident: hard landing
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26LA143
- 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
- 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
Paul D Cannon Kitfox Light Squared
- Aircraft type
- Paul D Cannon KITFOX LIGHT SQUARED
- 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
- N11446
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2026)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- 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/owner of the amateur-built airplane reported that, while performing touch-and-go landings, he failed to properly flare the airplane resulting in a hard landing. The landing loads exceeded the strength of the main landing gear attachment, which resulted in a separation of the main landing gear. The airplane subsequently departed the left side of the runway and struck the visual approach slope indicator lights, resulting in substantial damage to the right wing strut. The pilot/owner’s postaccident examination revealed that the aftermarket landing gear installation had been improperly installed. The attachment bolts had been overtorqued which preloaded and overstressed the hardware, reducing the load-carrying capability. The stripped attachment bolts allowed the clamping brackets to separate under load. The hard landing exceeded the reduced capacity of the landing gear attachment, resulting in a separation of the landing gear and a subsequent runway excursion.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly flare the airplane during landing, which resulted in a hard landing and separation of the main landing gear. Contributing to the accident was the improper installation and over torquing of the landing gear attachment hardware, which reduced the load-carrying capacity of the landing gear clamping brackets.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26LA143
- Event ID
- 20260330202717
- Case number
- WPR26LA143
- 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: f34e27cac1f64ab0ca05c8e97ce71faae912943f6e63d085d35d210500faff8b; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:05:57.794Z.