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Atlas / NTSB / ERA20CA142

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event ERA20CA142

2020-03-27 Stow, Massachusetts, United States Airport · 6B6 None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing in gusting crosswind conditions, which resulted in a runway excursion and impact with vegetation.

Factual narrative

The pilot reported that, upon landing, the airplane veered sharply to the left and departed the runway onto the adjacent grass. The pilot applied full power to go around; however the airplane continued to veer left and impacted vegetation. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the engine mount, firewall, and both wings. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. An automated weather observation station about 10 miles east of the accident site reported that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 330° at 14 knots, gusting to 25 knots. The pilot was landing the airplane on runway 3. The pilot reported that, upon landing, the airplane veered sharply left and departed the runway onto adjacent grass. The pilot applied full power to go around; however, the airplane continued to veer left and impacted vegetation. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the engine mount, firewall, and both wings. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions 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 Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Directional control-Not attained/maintained - C
  • C Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot - C
  • C Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Wind-Gusts-Effect on operation - C
  • C Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Wind-Crosswind-Effect on operation - C
  • C Environmental issues-Physical environment-Object/animal/substance-Tree(s)-Effect on operation - C

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2020_ERA20CA142.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 (runway excursion). 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 ↗