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Atlas / NTSB / ERA21LA255

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event ERA21LA255

2021-05-12 Martinsburg, West Virginia, United States Airport · MRB None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N54RV

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

VAN'S AIRCRAFT RV-4

Year of manufacture

1992 · 29 years old at event

Engine

LYCOMING 0-320 SERIES (180 hp)

Seats / Engines

2 seats · 1 engine

Last airworthiness date

19930629

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A6D71E

Registrant of record

EBRAHIMI MAZDA

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot’s improper landing flare in variable crosswind conditions, which resulted in a hard landing.

Factual narrative

The pilot reported that after a local flight during an approach to land, he “rounded out too soon” in the landing flare, which resulted in the airplane entering an aerodynamic stall “a couple of feet above the runway.” The airplane subsequently touched down hard on the runway, the airplane skidded to a stop, and the pilot shut down the airplane and pushed it onto a taxiway. Photographs provided by the Federal Aviation Administration revealed substantial to the rear fuselage area and engine mount, in addition to a wrinkled firewall and damaged propeller. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. At the time of the accident, the pilot was landing the airplane on runway 8 with wind reported near the accident time from 320° at 7 knots, variable from 290° to 350°. 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
  • Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Wind-Variable wind-Response/compensation
  • Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Landing flare-Not attained/maintained

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2021_ERA21LA255.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 ↗