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Atlas / NTSB / ERA25LA140

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event ERA25LA140

2025-02-28 Arcadia, Florida, United States Airport · X06 None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N3080N

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

CESSNA 120

Year of manufacture

1947 · 78 years old at event

Engine

CONT MOTOR C85 SERIES (85 hp)

Seats / Engines

2 seats · 1 engine

Last airworthiness date

19560705

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A33F6F

Registrant of record

ARMOR TOBY B

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control while landing.

Factual narrative

The pilot of the tailwheel-equipped airplane stated that she encountered a “thermal” while attempting to land, which deflected the tail of the airplane off the runway centerline. As she was attempting to realign the airplane, it departed the right side of the runway and impacted a concrete drainage culvert, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures that contributed to the accident. 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-Not attained/maintained

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2025_ERA25LA140.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. 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 ↗