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Atlas / NTSB / WPR21LA348

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event WPR21LA348

2021-09-19 Grass Valley, California, United States Airport · GOO None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot’s failure to attain a proper touchdown point on the runway while landing in gusting wind conditions, which resulted in a runway overrun. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s distraction due to an electrical issue.

Factual narrative

The pilot reported that, he departed normally to fly the airport traffic pattern. After he turned to the base leg of the traffic pattern, he observed a low voltage indication on the annunciator panel and was unable to announce his base turn on the radio. The pilot then turned to the final approach leg of the traffic pattern without making the announcement on the radio and added three notches of flaps. He experienced “windshear” near the runway threshold and the airplane briefly ascended. The pilot attempted to regain his glide path by extending full flaps and the airplane floated down the runway. At the time he was concerned about climbing out, so he elected to continue the landing instead of performing a go-around. After the airplane eventually touched down on the runway, the pilot applied full braking, but the airplane skidded off the runway edge into a ditch, which resulted in substantial damage to the right wing. According to the pilot, he misjudged the landing distance and landed long to salvage the landing instead of attempting a go-around. He further remarked that the electrical issue affected his radio and prevented him from announcing his base and final turns in the airport traffic pattern, which may have influenced his decision to land promptly. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident 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).

  • Aircraft-Aircraft systems-Communications system-(general)-Malfunction
  • Personnel issues-Psychological-Personality/attitude-Motivation/respond to pressure-Pilot
  • Personnel issues-Action/decision-Info processing/decision-Decision making/judgment-Pilot
  • Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Descent/approach/glide path-Not attained/maintained
  • Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Wind-Gusts-Effect on operation

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2021_WPR21LA348.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 (go-around). 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 ↗