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Atlas / NTSB / ERA11CA283

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event ERA11CA283

2011-05-03 Fort Pierce, Florida, United States Airport · FPR None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The student pilot's improper flare, which resulted in a hard landing.

Factual narrative

According to the student pilot, during his third solo flight, the airplane was stable on the final leg of the traffic pattern. He increased the pitch of the airplane and began to flare when the stall warning horn sounded. The student pilot then released the back pressure on the yoke to decrease pitch, the airplane impacted the runway, and the nose wheel "bounced heavily." After the airplane bounced heavily, the nosewheel buckled and the right rudder pedal jammed to the right. The airplane then veered off to the right side of the runway, coming to rest in a grass apron. During the accident sequence, the airplane incurred substantial damage to the firewall. During a subsequent examination of the wreckage, a Federal Aviation Administration inspector found no preexisting anomalies of the airplane, nor did the student pilot report any. According to the student pilot, who was on his third solo flight, the airplane was stable on the final leg of the traffic pattern. He increased the pitch of the airplane and began to flare when the stall warning horn sounded. The student pilot then released the back pressure on the yoke to decrease pitch before the airplane impacted the runway, causing the nosewheel to bounce and buckle and the right rudder pedal to jam to the right. The airplane then veered off the right side of the runway, coming to rest in a grass apron. During the accident sequence the airplane incurred substantial damage to the firewall. During a subsequent examination of the wreckage, a Federal Aviation Administration inspector found no preexisting anomalies with the airplane, nor did the student pilot report any. 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-Landing flare-Not attained/maintained - C
  • C Personnel issues-Action/decision-Action-Incorrect action performance-Student pilot - C

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2011_ERA11CA283.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 ↗