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Atlas / NTSB / ERA25LA133

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event ERA25LA133

2025-02-15 Culpeper, Virginia, United States Airport · CJR None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N373AM

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

DIAMOND AIRCRAFT DA20-C1

Year of manufacture

2006 · 19 years old at event

Engine

CONT MOTOR IO-240-B (125 hp)

Seats / Engines

2 seats · 1 engine

Last airworthiness date

20060511

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A43EFC

Registrant of record

KA HOLDINGS LLC

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control of the airplane during the takeoff roll, resulting in a runway excursion.

Factual narrative

Following an uneventful flight and taxi back to the runway, the student pilot reported that when he applied takeoff power, the airplane began to veer to the left. He applied right rudder, but the control input was ineffective. He then reduced the power to idle and applied both brakes, but the airplane exited the left side of the runway and came to rest in a drainage ditch. The pilot was uninjured, and the airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and empennage. Postaccident examination by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the flight controls, braking system, or the nose wheel that would have precluded normal operation. 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
  • Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Directional control-Attain/maintain not possible

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2025_ERA25LA133.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 (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.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗