NTSB CAROL · Event
Event ERA15CA021
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot's improper approach to landing and his failure to perform a go-around, which resulted in a runway overshoot, runway excursion, and collision with vegetation and water.
Factual narrative
According to the pilot, the flight was uneventful; however, as he flared the airplane in ground effect, it floated and overran the runway coming to rest inverted, in about 6 feet of water. He was unable to recall if he applied power to the engine in order to perform a go-around. An eyewitness reported that the airplane's landing gear did not make contact with the runway surface and subsequently contacted mangrove vegetation at the departure end of the runway prior to the airplane nosing over into the water. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing. The pilot reported no pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or abnormalities with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. According to the pilot, the flight was uneventful; however, as he flared the airplane in ground effect, it floated and overran the runway coming to rest inverted, in about 6 feet of water. He was unable to recall if he applied power to the engine in order to perform a go-around. An eyewitness reported that the airplane's landing gear did not make contact with the runway surface and subsequently contacted mangrove vegetation at the departure end of the runway prior to the airplane nosing over into the water. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing. The pilot reported no pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or abnormalities with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. 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 Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot - C
- C Personnel issues-Action/decision-Info processing/decision-Decision making/judgment-Pilot - C
- C Personnel issues-Action/decision-Action-Lack of action-Pilot - C
- F Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Aircraft capability-Landing distance-Not attained/maintained - F
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2014_ERA15CA021.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Beyond the agency record
Search this event elsewhere.
Pre-filled searches into the sources where news + community discussion of aviation events lives. External sources are reported, not agency. Treat them as signal that something happened, not as fact about what happened.
Entity-clustered aviation events in the press — last 24 hr + 30-day archive.
Official agency record + docket.
Investigative docket: factual reports, photos, transcripts.
Long-running aviation incident database (Flight Safety Foundation).
Community NTSB synthesis blog — often has photos and witness reports.
Gold-standard aviation incident blog.
Aviation industry news search.
GA pilot forum — informed but rumor-prone.
GA pilot subreddit search.
Tail-number page — flight history (free tier limited).
AOPA Air Safety Institute search.
Mainstream press coverage. Recent events only.
Privacy-preserving news search.
External links open in a new tab. We don't ingest their content; we deep-link search queries.
Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (runway excursion, go-around). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
- SKYbrary (Eurocontrol) 2024 · SKYbrary article
Runway Excursion — SKYbrary Knowledge Base
SKYbrary runway excursion review — RE-OE (overruns) + RE-LO (lateral). Risk drivers: long landing, high approach speed, contaminated surface, tailwind, mis-set autobrakes.
- 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.
Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗