NTSB CAROL · Event
Event BFO89LA013
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
PILOTS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE AIRPLANE DURING A TOUCH AND GO LANDING.
Factual narrative
THE PLT RPRTD HE WAS FLYING AN AUTOPILOT COUPLED ILS APCH WHEN THE YAW DAMPER & AUTOPILOT DISENGAGED. AFTER SOME DIFFICULTY, THE PLT WAS ABLE TO KEEP THE AUTOPILOT ENGAGED. HE SAID HE DISENGAGED THE AUTOPILOT ON FINAL APCH AT AN ALT OF APRX 250' AGL. HE LOWERED FULL FLAPS & SLOWED THE ACFT TO 107 KTS. THE PLT STATED THAT AFTER THE ACFT TOUCHED DOWN & TRAVELED APRX 1000', ITS NOSE BEGAN TO RISE & OSCILLATE. HE ABORTED THE LNDG, BUT HE WAS UNABLE TO GET AN UP & LOCKED INDICATION FOR THE NOSE GEAR, ALTHOUGH IT WOULD LOCK DOWN. AFTER MAKING A FLY-BY TO VERIFY THE GEAR POSITION, HE MADE A 'SLOW' LNDG. THE PLT RPRTD THAT ALTHOUGH A SLIGHT OSCILLATION WAS NOTED DRG THE LNDG, HE FORCEFULLY HELD THE NOSE DOWN AS HE SLOWED THE ACFT. TESTING & EVALUATION OF THE AUTOPILOT SYSTEM FAILED TO DISCLOSE ANY DISCREPANCY WHICH WOULD HAVE RESULTED IN THE OSCILLATIONS. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_1988_BFO89LA013.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
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Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (autopilot). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
- arXiv 2025 · arXiv preprint
ROSflight 2.0: Lean ROS 2-Based Autopilot for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
ROSflight is a lean, open-source autopilot ecosystem for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Designed by researchers for researchers, it is built to lower the barrier to entry to UAV research and acceler…
- arXiv 2025 · arXiv preprint
ROSplane 2.0: A Fixed-Wing Autopilot for Research
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) research requires the integration of cutting-edge technology into existing autopilot frameworks.
- arXiv 2024 · arXiv preprint
A Data-Driven Autopilot for Fixed-Wing Aircraft Based on Model Predictive Control
Autopilots for fixed-wing aircraft are typically designed based on linearized aerodynamic models consisting of stability and control derivatives obtained from wind-tunnel testing.
- arXiv 2022 · arXiv preprint
Experimental Flight Testing of a Fault-Tolerant Adaptive Autopilot for Fixed-Wing Aircraft
This paper presents an adaptive autopilot for fixed-wing aircraft and compares its performance with a fixed-gain autopilot.
- arXiv 2021 · arXiv preprint
An Adaptive Digital Autopilot for Fixed-Wing Aircraft with Actuator Faults
This paper develops an adaptive digital autopilot for a fixed-wing aircraft and compares its performance with a fixed-gain autopilot.
- arXiv 2020 · arXiv preprint
Reinforcement Learning for Robust Missile Autopilot Design
Designing missiles' autopilot controllers has been a complex task, given the extensive flight envelope and the nonlinear flight dynamics.
Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗