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Atlas / NTSB / DCA19LA193

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event DCA19LA193

2019-08-08 Orlando, Florida, United States Airport · MCO None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N717FR

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

AIRBUS A321-211

Year of manufacture

2017 · 2 years old at event

TCDS

A28NM · AIRBUS SAS

Engine

CFM INTL CFM56-5B3/3

Seats / Engines

199 seats · 2 engines

Last airworthiness date

20170215

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A9969B

Registrant of record

BANK OF UTAH TRUSTEE

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

Encountering gusty conditions at a low altitude during landing and the crew’s decision to do a go-around at a low altitude with an excessive rotation rate.

Factual narrative

The final approach was considered stabilized. At about 40 feet above ground level, a significant tailwind gust of about 25 knots was experienced, creating a loss of airspeed. The loss of airspeed resulted in a loss of lift at a low height and led to a hard touchdown. At about 10 feet above the runway (and before the hard touchdown) the flight crew set “TOGA” thrust for go-around and applied full back stick pressure resulting in a pitch increase to +9.2 degrees. The engines required time to spool up and the airplane lost altitude before it started to climb. The increase in pitch and delay in thrust caused the tailstrike, resulting in substantial damage to the airplane. The airplane was fitted with a tailstrike prevention option which appears on the primary flight director (PFD) when below 400 feet but deactivates when thrust levers are pushed to “TOGA”. Standard operating procedures for go-arounds near the ground inform flight crews to avoid an excessive rotation rate to prevent tailstrikes. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).

  • Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Wind-Tailwind-Decision related to condition
  • Personnel issues-Action/decision-Action-Delayed action-Pilot

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2019_DCA19LA193.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (go-around, flight director). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗