CEN25LA369
2025-09-07 · Sturgis, Michigan, United States · Minor · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed
Airport IRS
Current FAA registration · N22LZ
- Make / Model
- ZENITH ZODIAC CH 650B
- Year of manufacture
- 2021 · 4 years old at event
- Engine
- VIKING 110 (110 hp)
- Seats / Engines
- 2 seats · 1 engine
- Last airworthiness date
- 20240618
- ADS-B equipped
- Yes — Mode-S A1DFBA
Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot’s failure to maintain control while landing.
Factual narrative
The pilot was conducting takeoffs and landings in the airplane at the time of the accident. According to the pilot, the initial takeoff and landing were completed without incident. The second takeoff was uneventful; however, on final approach for the second landing, the airplane ballooned about 10 ft above the runway when it encountered a wind gust. The pilot reported that he was late in initiating a go-around. The airplane bounced and then impacted on the nose landing gear resulting in the collapse. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the forward fuselage and right wing. The pilot noted that the wind increased from about 4 knots at the beginning of the flight, to about 10 knots with gusts to 15 knots. He stated there were no failures or malfunctions associated with the airplane before the accident. He added that additional airspeed on approach during gusty wind conditions might have prevented the accident. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12
NTSB Findings
FAA avdata. C = Cause, F = Factor.
- — Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot
- — Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Wind-Gusts-Contributed to outcome
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2025_CEN25LA369.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.
- TallyAero Live Wire Aviation press
- NTSB CAROL Agency ↗
- NTSB Docket Agency ↗
- Aviation Safety Network Aviation press ↗
- Kathryn's Report Aviation press ↗
- Aviation Herald Aviation press ↗
- AVweb Aviation press ↗
- Pilots of America Community ↗
- Reddit /r/flying Community ↗
- FlightAware Aviation press ↗
- AOPA accident database Aviation press ↗
- Google News News ↗
- DuckDuckGo News ↗
Related research
Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (go-around). All research papers
- NASA NTRS 2025 · Conference Paper A Training Study to Improve Monitoring During A Go-Around
As part of an FAA program to improve go-around (GA) safety, we were asked to determine if we could improve the performance of the Pilot Monitoring (PM) during a GA maneuver.
- Flight Safety Foundation 2024 · FSF / AeroSafety World Go-Around Safety Forum Findings
Foundation Go-Around Safety Forum technical findings — examines why pilots fail to execute go-arounds when criteria are met (stabilized approach gate not met, energy state out of envelope, traffic con…
- Semantic Scholar 2022 · Article (Journal of Safety Research) Go-around accidents and general aviation safety.
INTRODUCTION Changes in General Aviation (GA) accident rates, specifically in the go-around phase, are examined by comparing the number of accidents, the proportion of fatal accidents, and the proport…
- Semantic Scholar 2021 · Article (Aerospace) Classification and Analysis of Go-Arounds in Commercial Aviation Using ADS-B Data
Go-arounds are a necessary aspect of commercial aviation and are conducted after a landing attempt has been aborted. It is necessary to conduct go-arounds in the safest possible manner, as go-arounds …
- NASA NTRS 2021 · Accepted Manuscript (Version with final changes) Go-Around Criteria Refinement for Transport Category Aircraft
Presently, airline pilots are trained to go around if, when lower than 500 ft above the ground, they are outside of a handful of parameters such as airspeed, position, and rate of descent.
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Conference Paper Validation of Proposed Go-Around Criteria Under Various Environmental Conditions
This paper evaluates the effects of environmental conditions on touchdown performance under varying approach states and validates proposed go-around criteria developed using data from a previously con…