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Atlas / NTSB / WPR25LA242

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event WPR25LA242

2025-07-31 Moriarty, New Mexico, United States Airport · 0E0 None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N50778

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

CHAMPION 7FC

Year of manufacture

1961 · 64 years old at event

Engine

CONT MOTOR C90-12F (95 hp)

Seats / Engines

2 seats · 1 engine

Last airworthiness date

20070410

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A6575F

Registrant of record

SICKLE STEVEN K

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot’s improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing.

Factual narrative

The pilot reported he was practicing landings and he intentionally flew slow on the approach to landing. The pilot said that during the landing flare, he forgot to focus on the horizon, and the airplane was high, and it stalled. Subsequently the airplane landed hard, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage. 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 oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Landing flare-Not attained/maintained
  • Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2025_WPR25LA242.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 (icing, stall). 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 ↗