CEN10CA490
2010-08-20 · Austin, Texas, United States · Serious · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed
Airport 3R9
Current FAA registration · N106LB
- Make / Model
- PIPER PA-46-310P
- Year of manufacture
- 1985 · 25 years old at event
- Engine
- CONT MOTOR TSIO-520 SER (300 hp)
- Seats / Engines
- 6 seats · 1 engine
- Last airworthiness date
- 19850816
- ADS-B equipped
- Yes — Mode-S A01BFA
Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot's failure to maintain a stabilized approach, which resulted in a loss of control on landing with a tailwind.
Factual narrative
The private pilot reported that he was distracted by his passenger, who was seated in the back of his single-engine, turbo-prop equipped airplane, and landed on a runway with an 18 knot tailwind. The pilot was unable to slow down and attempted to abort the landing by abruptly applying full power to go around. The pilot said he pushed the throttle in too fast and got no power. he said he realized he had "flooded the engine." The pilot then maneuvered the airplane away from approaching obstacles at the end of the runway and then went off the runway, and crossed a ditch on to a golf course before coming to a stop. The airplane sustained structural damage to the left wing. The left main landing gear and propeller were also damaged. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical deficiencies with the airplane. The pilot reported that he was distracted by his passenger, who was seated in the back of the airplane. He landed with an 18 knot tailwind and, after being unable to slow the airplane, attempted to abort the landing by abruptly applying full engine power. He advanced the throttle too fast and the engine power did not respond. He realized that he had flooded the engine and maneuvered the airplane away from approaching obstacles at the end of the runway. The airplane continued off the runway and crossed a ditch on to a golf course before coming to a stop; it sustained structural damage to the left wing. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical deficiencies with the airplane. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12
NTSB Findings
FAA avdata. C = Cause, F = Factor.
- C Personnel issues-Action/decision-Info processing/decision-Decision making/judgment-Pilot - C
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2010_CEN10CA490.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Search this event elsewhere
External sources are reported, not agency: signal that something happened, not fact about what happened.
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Related research
Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (loss of control). All research papers
- Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons 2025 · Journal article (JAAER) A Scoping Review of Aviation Loss of Control Inflight Research
Loss of control – inflight (LOC-I) contributes to aircraft accidents at unacceptably high rates. Significant industry efforts and research have aimed to improve LOC-I prevention, detection, and recove…
- SKYbrary (Eurocontrol) 2024 · SKYbrary article Loss of Control In-Flight (LOC-I) — SKYbrary Knowledge Base
SKYbrary comprehensive knowledge-base entry on Loss of Control In-Flight — definitions, contributing factors, accident case studies (Air France 447, Colgan 3407), and prevention strategies.
- Semantic Scholar 2024 · Article (International Conference on Networking and Services) Risk Assessment of Loss of Control In-Flight Trajectories for Urban Air Mobility Safety
In Urban Air Mobility (UAM), maintaining a minimum separation between aircraft is a safety requirement, which becomes challenging amidst congested air traffic and off-nominal conditions, such as Loss …
- NTSB Aircraft Accident Reports 2022 · Accident report Loss of Control on Takeoff in Icing Conditions — Citation 560XL
Cessna Citation 560XL fatal takeoff icing accident, March 2018. Investigation of a Citation 560XL loss-of-control takeoff accident in icing conditions.
- Semantic Scholar 2021 · Article (Aviation) ANALYSIS OF GENERAL AVIATION FIXED-WING AIRCRAFT ACCIDENTS INVOLVING INFLIGHT LOSS OF CONTROL USING A STATE-BASED APPROACH
Inflight loss of control (LOC-I) is a significant cause of General Aviation (GA) fixed-wing aircraft accidents. The United States National Transportation Safety Board’s database provides a rich source…
- NASA NTRS 2021 · Presentation Use of Design of Experiments in Determining Neural Network Architectures for Loss of Control Detection
Abstract—We describe empirical methods for selecting a neural network architecture to implement belief state inference on generic commercial transport aircraft.