NTSB CAROL · Event
Event ERA20CA264
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
A hard landing and subsequent loss of control.
Factual narrative
Following an uneventful flight, the pilot was landing the airplane at the destination airport. When the airplane touched down, he “experienced and issue” with the right main landing gear. The airplane then veered off the right-side of the runway. The pilot applied corrective rudder inputs to bring the airplane back toward the runway centerline, but it continued past the centerline and off the left side of the runway. The pilot then applied the brakes but found that there was “no action.” The airplane came to rest off the left side of the runway. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed the nose landing gear had sheared from the fuselage and the main landing gear had collapsed. The propeller was damaged, and the lower fuselage was substantially damaged. The right main landing gear trunnion rod was pushed up and through the top of the right wing. Further examination of the right main landing gear revealed the two front support tubes for the landing gear's shock absorbers were both broken at the base where they attach to the shock absorber assembly. The brakes appeared new and no defects were noted. The right tire spun freely and exhibited two flat spots, one of which was through the tire cord, rupturing it. The tire also displayed rubbing and scuffing marks that were off-axis relative to the direction of travel. Skid marks on the runway were consistent with the damage observed on the right main landing gear tire. Given the damage observed to the right main landing gear, it is likely that the pilot landed the airplane hard. The damage to the landing gear likely resulted in the subsequent loss of control and runway excursion. 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
- — Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Landing flare-Not attained/maintained
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2020_ERA20CA264.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 (loss of control, 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.
- Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons 2017 · Conference paper
Energy Safety Management: Mitigating Loss of Control Inflight
Under the new Airman Certification Standards (ACS), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has mandated for the first time that private and commercial pilot candidates demonstrate understanding of …
- Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons 2025 · Journal article (JAAER)
A Scoping Review of Aviation Loss of Control Inflight Research
Loss of control – inflight (LOC-I) contributes to aircraft accidents at unacceptably high rates. Significant industry efforts and research have aimed to improve LOC-I prevention, detection, and recove…
- SKYbrary (Eurocontrol) 2024 · SKYbrary article
Loss of Control In-Flight (LOC-I) — SKYbrary Knowledge Base
SKYbrary comprehensive knowledge-base entry on Loss of Control In-Flight — definitions, contributing factors, accident case studies (Air France 447, Colgan 3407), and prevention strategies.
- 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.
- NTSB Aircraft Accident Reports 2022 · Accident report
Loss of Control on Takeoff in Icing Conditions — Citation 560XL
Cessna Citation 560XL fatal takeoff icing accident, March 2018. Investigation of a Citation 560XL loss-of-control takeoff accident in icing conditions.
- Semantic Scholar 2021 · Article (Aviation)
ANALYSIS OF GENERAL AVIATION FIXED-WING AIRCRAFT ACCIDENTS INVOLVING INFLIGHT LOSS OF CONTROL USING A STATE-BASED APPROACH
Inflight loss of control (LOC-I) is a significant cause of General Aviation (GA) fixed-wing aircraft accidents. The United States National Transportation Safety Board’s database provides a rich source…
Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗