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Atlas / NTSB / WPR20CA166

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event WPR20CA166

2020-06-03 Glendive, Montana, United States Airport · GDV None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N8QT

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

AVIAT AIRCRAFT INC A-1

Year of manufacture

1997 · 23 years old at event

Engine

LYCOMING 0-360-A1D (180 hp)

Seats / Engines

2 seats · 1 engine

Last airworthiness date

19971003

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S AADE9B

Registrant of record

JD SERVICES INC

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot's failure to maintain airplane control during landing in gusting wind condition which resulted in a collision with terrain.

Factual narrative

The pilot reported that the airplane was configured for landing on runway 30, and he intended to perform a three-point landing. He estimated that the wind was from 260° at 30 kts. When the airplane was about 1 ft above the runway surface, it encountered a microburst with a strong gust of wind which lifted the left wing. The pilot was unable to counteract the sudden attitude shift and the right wing drug on the ground. The pilot attempted to abort the landing as the left wing then impacted the ground, and the airplane became airborne shortly thereafter. The pilot remained in the airport traffic pattern and landed uneventfully. The left aileron was partially torn off as a result of the accident sequence. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane 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).

  • C Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot - C
  • Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Wind-Gusts-Contributed to outcome

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2020_WPR20CA166.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 (microburst). 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 ↗