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ERA21LA168

2021-03-31 · Crystal River, Florida, United States · Serious · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed

Airport CGC

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The student pilot’s inadequate compensation for a crosswind during landing, which resulted in a loss of directional control and a runway excursion.

Factual narrative

The student pilot was conducting a solo cross-country training flight, and reported that while touching down on the runway, a gust of wind pushed the airplane to the left. The pilot attempted to compensate by applying right rudder, but it was not effective. The airplane came to rest on the left side of the runway, inverted, and sustained substantial damage to the right wing, empennage, and rudder. The pilot was seriously injured. While the pilot initially reported that he thought there might have been an issue with the airplane’s right rudder not functioning properly, he later stated that the airplane was functioning as designed. 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_2021_ERA21LA168.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