During descent into William P. Hobby International Airport (HOU), air traffic control (ATC) advised the Delux Public Charter, doing business as JSX Air, flight crew to expect runway 4 for landing and that winds were from 130° at 16 knots (kts), gusting to 24 kts, which was below the Embraer EMB-145LR’s recommended maximum gust of 30 kts. According to the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) transcript, the captain, who was the pilot flying, expressed concern about the crosswind, but the first officer (FO), who was the pilot monitoring, stated it was “not that bad” of a crosswind. On approach, about 1,300 ft above ground level (agl), the autopilot was disconnected. Shortly thereafter, the pitch trim was moved in the aircraft nose down (AND) direction, while the captain pulled aft on the control column to maintain an aircraft nose up (ANU) attitude.
Throughout the approach, the AND pitch trim continued and ANU pressure (aft) was applied to the control column. Before touchdown, the captain called for a go-around, but the airplane touched down before the go-around was initiated. The airplane did not flare before landing, likely due to the excessive use of AND pitch trim, which limited the captain’s control column authority to arrest the descent. The airplane touched down hard and the left main landing gear (LMLG) separated.
FDR data captured the accident flight and two previous flights, one of which was flown by the accident captain. The Airplane Performance Study compared the use of pitch trim across the three flights in the 90 seconds before touchdown – the accident flight, a previous flight flown by the accident captain and a flight flown by a different pilot. In the accident flight, the accident captain made AND and ANU pitch trim inputs throughout the landing approach and pitch trim oscillated between about 0° and 2° ANU. This was likely a technique used to adjust airplane pitch and vertical speed. About 17 seconds before touchdown, AND inputs were made and at touchdown, pitch trim was at -2.86 and continued to about -4°, full AND.
In the previous flight flown by the accident captain, the captain made similar AND and ANU pitch trim inputs until 10 seconds before touchdown when ANU pitch trim inputs were made to about 3° ANU at touchdown. In the flight flown by another pilot, the pilot flying made no pitch trim inputs. Although use of trim on the approach was not trained or encouraged by JSX, the data is consistent with the captain’s admission that she would use the trim during the approach and flare. However, on the accident flight, the captain continued to use AND trim rather than ANU trim, as was her technique.
The captain had amblyopia, which likely impaired her binocular depth perception, but there was no evidence that impaired binocular depth perception was a factor in the accident. Amblyopia also may include brain effects that can adversely affect performance of some visuo-cognitive tasks. However, there was insufficient evidence to conclude that any such effects contributed significantly to the captain’s workload or performance during the approach. Thus, reviewed evidence provided no clear indication that the captain’s amblyopia contributed to the accident.
The LMLG separated during the hard landing due to vertical acceleration that exceeded its design limits. The hard landing and resulting gear separation resulted in substantial damage to the left wing structure.