FTW97LA259 · Luscombe 8A
Luscombe 8A · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Deming Municipal Airport (DMN) to 31F
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA259
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Luscombe 8A
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N71381
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Deming Municipal Airport (DMN), Deming, NMTo 31F
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · landing roll
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of control on ground/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to witnesses at the airport, the pilot of the tailwheel-equipped airplane was executing a full stop landing on runway 26. During the landing roll, the pilot lost control of the airplane resulting in a ground loop. The pilot stated that prior to initiating his approach, he had determined that 'the winds were calm since he did not see any clues to indicate he was landing with a quartering tailwind.' The pilot also stated that the tailwheel steering on his heel brake equipped airplane is 'marginal at best' when fully operational, and his was no exception, especially when attempting left turns. The pilot stated that he had accumulated over 700 hours in Luscombes. Witnesses at the airport stated winds at the time of the accident were reported from 090 at approximately 6 to 10 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the existing wind conditions. A factor was the prevailing quartering tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA259
- Event ID
- 20001208X08375
- Case number
- FTW97LA259
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 24925d6648fc909534907f675dd2e92ebe6b656d2fb7dc5d5e5868bbc8f697c1; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:17:21.818Z.