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Atlas / NTSB / ERA10CA470

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event ERA10CA470

2010-09-06 Winterville, North Carolina, United States Airport · NC47 Minor 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot's loss of directional control while landing during an encounter with a wind gust.

Factual narrative

The pilot reported that he made a normal approach to the runway with a "light head wind" in his experimental light sport, weight-shift trike. During the landing flare, when the trike was about 5 to 10 feet off the ground, "an unexpected gust or ground turbulence threw [the trike] sharp right off the runway." The pilot was unable to straighten the trike, which then impacted the ground, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot reported no preexisting mechanical anomalies with the trike. The winds were reported as calm at an airport 8 miles to the north at the time of the accident. The pilot reported that he made a normal approach to the runway with a light headwind in his experimental light sport, weight-shift trike. During the landing flare, with the trike about 5 to 10 feet above the ground, it encountered a gust of wind. The pilot was unable to straighten the trike and it impacted the ground, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation. The wind was reported as calm at an airport 8 miles to the north at the time of the accident. 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-Action/decision-Action-Incorrect action performance-Pilot - C

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2010_ERA10CA470.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 (turbulence). 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 ↗