NTSB CAROL · Event
Event ERA21LA371
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot’s improper decision to reject the takeoff at an excessive speed, resulting in a runway excursion and collision with a fence. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to lock the door as required by the placarded door closing procedures.
Factual narrative
The pilot reported that, during his normal preflight procedures, he latched, but did not lock, the baggage door, and there were no problems with the latch. During the takeoff roll, at rotation speed, his wife, who was in the right cockpit seat, noticed that the baggage door had opened. Fearing that his dogs in the rear seat would exit the airplane, he decided to abort the takeoff. The airplane departed the end of the runway, through the overrun, and down an embankment before colliding with a perimeter fence, resulting in substantial damage to the right wing. A post-accident examination of the baggage door and latching hardware revealed no malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. There was a placard inside the cabin that required locking the baggage door as the last step to securing it. 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-Action/decision-Info processing/decision-Decision making/judgment-Pilot
- — Aircraft-Aircraft structures-Doors-Cargo/baggage doors-Incorrect use/operation
- — Personnel issues-Action/decision-Action-Forgotten action/omission-Pilot
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2021_ERA21LA371.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
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Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (runway excursion). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
- SKYbrary (Eurocontrol) 2024 · SKYbrary article
Runway Excursion — SKYbrary Knowledge Base
SKYbrary runway excursion review — RE-OE (overruns) + RE-LO (lateral). Risk drivers: long landing, high approach speed, contaminated surface, tailwind, mis-set autobrakes.
- NTSB Aircraft Accident Reports 2019 · Accident report
Embraer ERJ 175 Runway Excursion at Charlotte Douglas
Republic Airline ERJ-175 runway excursion CLT, January 2018. Examines a low-energy runway excursion involving misuse of autobrakes + thrust reverser response after a high-crosswind landing on a contam…
- NASA NTRS 2025 · Presentation
Uncovering Resilient Behavior in the Aviation Safety Reporting System Using Large Language Models
Resiliency is present in everyday life, both in system design and exhibited by the operators that function within these systems.
- NASA NTRS 2025 · Conference Paper
Uncovering Resilient Behavior in the Aviation Safety Reporting System Using Large Language Models
Resiliency is present in everyday life, both in system design and exhibited by the operators that function within these systems.
- Flight Safety Foundation 2024 · FSF / AeroSafety World
Runway Safety Initiative Final Report (RSI)
Foundation Runway Safety Initiative final report — comprehensive analysis of runway excursion + incursion risk drivers worldwide.
- Semantic Scholar 2020 · Article
Towards online prediction of safety-critical landing metrics in aviation using supervised machine learning
Abstract In recent years, due to the increased availability of data and improvements in computing power, application of machine learning techniques to various aviation safety problems for identifying,…
Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗