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ERA21LA260

2021-06-17 · ARGYLE, New York, United States · Serious · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed

Airport 1C3

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed during landing, which led to the airplane exceeding its critical angle-of-attack and experiencing an aerodynamic stall.

Factual narrative

The pilot reported that, while on short final in his tailwheel-equipped airplane, he began to feel “slow.” He added power and realized he had drifted right of the runway centerline. In an attempt to recover, he “pulled back too much on the stick,” and the airplane stalled just above the ground. Subsequently, the airplane impacted right of the runway in a nose-low attitude and came to rest inverted. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. The pilot reported that the airplane had no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

FAA avdata. C = Cause, F = Factor.

  • — Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot
  • — Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Angle of attack-Capability exceeded

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2021_ERA21LA260.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

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