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Atlas / NTSB / BFO90LA022

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event BFO90LA022

1990-01-27 GAITHERSBURG, Maryland, United States Airport · GAI Serious 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

INADEQUATE SUPERVISION BY THE INSTRUCTOR PILOT (CFI), WHICH RESULTED IN FAILURE TO MAINTAIN AIRSPEED AND A SUBSEQUENT STALL. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: GUSTY/CROSSWIND CONDITIONS, THE STUDENT PILOT'S INADEQUATE COMPENSATION FOR WIND CONDITIONS AND FAILURE TO MAINTAIN RUNWAY ALIGNMENT, AND THE CFI'S LACK OF TOTAL EXPERIENCE AS AN INSTRUCTOR PILOT.

Factual narrative

THE DUAL STUDENT PLT WAS ATTEMPTING HIS FIRST LNDG IN A CESSNA 172. ALL OF HIS PREVIOUS FLTS WERE IN CESSNA 150. THE INSTRUCTOR PLT (CFI) STATED HE WAS GOING TO EVALUATE THE LNDG & DETERMINE IF THE STUDENT WAS TO COUNTINUE WITH MORE LNDGS. ACCORDING TO THE CFI & STUDENT, WIND GUSTS WERE OCCURRING. THE STUDENT STATED THAT DURING THE APPROACH, THE FLAPS WERE SET AT 30 DEGREES & THE AIRSPEED WAS ABOUT 60 KTS. HE STATED THAT HE 'CRABBED' INTO THE WIND, & WHEN HE STARTED THE LANDING FLARE, THE ACFT DRIFTED LEFT OF THE RWY & THE STALL WARNING HORN SOUNDED. THE CFI TOOK CONTROL OF THE ACFT & TRIED TO CORRECT THE SITUATION. HOWEVER, THE ACFT SUBSEQUENTLY ROLLED ABRUPTLY TO THE LEFT & HIT THE GROUND WITH FIRST THE LEFT WING, THEN THE NOSE. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1990_BFO90LA022.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 (stall). 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 ↗