NTSB CAROL · Event
Event ERA10CA381
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during a crosswind landing.
Factual narrative
According to the pilot, as he flared the airplane for a crosswind landing to runway 25, he encountered a gust of wind. The airplane bounced once on the runway and veered left and right several times before the pilot was "unable to redirect the aircraft back" as it veered off the right side of the runway, into grass which sloped down to a drainage ditch. The pilot attempted to recover the airplane for "several hundred feet," before the right main landing gear got caught in higher grass and mud, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical anomalies with the airplane. He further reported 888 hours of total flight time, including 857 hours in the make and model of the accident airplane. A weather report issued around the time of the accident, at an airport about 19 miles to the southwest, included winds from 290 at 12 knots, gusting to 15 knots. According to the pilot, as he flared the airplane for a crosswind landing to runway 25, he encountered a gust of wind. The airplane bounced once on the runway and veered left and right several times before the pilot was "unable to redirect the aircraft back" as it veered off the right side of the runway, into grass which sloped down to a drainage ditch. The pilot attempted to recover the airplane for "several hundred feet," before the right main landing gear got caught in higher grass and mud, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical anomalies with the airplane. He further reported 888 hours of total flight time, including 857 hours in the make and model of the accident airplane. A weather report issued around the time of the accident, at an airport about 19 miles to the southwest, included winds from 290 at 12 knots, gusting to 15 knots. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12
NTSB Findings
Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).
- C Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Directional control-Not attained/maintained - C
- C Personnel issues-Task performance-(general)-(general)-Pilot - C
- C Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Wind-Crosswind-Response/compensation - C
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2010_ERA10CA381.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
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