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ERA21LA280

2021-07-07 · Bishopville, South Carolina, United States · None · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed

Airport 52J

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The flight instructor’s inadequate supervision of the student during a go-around, which resulted in a loss of lift and a subsequent collision with the VASI lights.

Factual narrative

The flight instructor reported that while practicing short field takeoff and landing maneuvers with a helicopter rated commercial pilot, about 25 ft above the runway he called for a go-around when the approach became unstable. When it became apparent to the instructor that the airplane was not climbing, he started to manipulate the flight controls with the student to assist with the go-around maneuver, unaware that the student had retracted the flaps fully to 0° degrees. Subsequently, the airplane lost lift, descended, and struck the Visual Approach Slope Indicator (VASI) lights before coming to rest in the grass, resulting in substantial damage to the stabilator. The flight instructor reported that there were no preimpact anomalies or malfunctions which would have precluded normal flight. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

FAA avdata. C = Cause, F = Factor.

  • — Personnel issues-Action/decision-Action-Delayed action-Instructor/check pilot
  • — Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Climb rate-Attain/maintain not possible

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2021_ERA21LA280.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 (icing, go-around). All research papers