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ERA21LA039

2020-11-06 · Winder, Georgia, United States · None · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed

Airport WDR

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot's loss of directional control while landing, which resulted in a runway excursion.

Factual narrative

The student pilot was performing a supervised solo flight in the airport traffic pattern as the flight instructor observed from the ground. During landing, upon touching down on the runway, the airplane bounced and started drifting to the left. The pilot attempted to correct, but the airplane continued to veer to the left. He added power in an attempt to abort the landing, but the airplane struck a taxiway sign and then “cartwheeled” before impacting a security fence off the side of the runway. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and wings. The flight instructor reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

FAA avdata. C = Cause, F = Factor.

  • — Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Directional control-Not attained/maintained
  • — Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2020_ERA21LA039.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Search this event elsewhere

External sources are reported, not agency: signal that something happened, not fact about what happened.

Related research

Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (runway excursion). All research papers