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Atlas / NTSB / ERA21LA143

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event ERA21LA143

2021-02-28 Panacea, Florida, United States Airport · 2J0 Serious 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed and exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during short final approach, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall at low altitude.

Factual narrative

A witness, who was also a pilot, reported that he observed the accident airplane on short final approach. The airplane was in a crab attitude due to a gusting crosswind and the witness heard the engine power increase several times. As the airplane neared the runway threshold, it drifted right of runway centerline and slowed, followed by an aerodynamic stall about 100 ft above ground level and descent nose-down into a grass area about 100 ft prior to the runway threshold. The witness went to the wreckage to assist the pilot and the pilot stated that he lost all control of the airplane. The airport manager subsequently confirmed flight control continuity from the cockpit to all control surfaces. After several requests, the accident pilot failed to complete and return a National Transportation Safety Board Pilot/Operator Aircraft Accident/Incident Report form. 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).

  • Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot
  • Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Airspeed-Not attained/maintained
  • Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Angle of attack-Capability exceeded

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2021_ERA21LA143.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 ↗