NYC98FA017 · Extra Flugzeugbau EA-200
Extra Flugzeugbau EA-200 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From OH32 to The Ohio State University Airport - Don Scott Field (OSU)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98FA017
- 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
- 1 · 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
Extra Flugzeugbau EA-200
- Aircraft type
- Extra EA-200
- 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
- N11EX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From OH32To The Ohio State University Airport - Don Scott Field (OSU), Columbus, OH
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aerobatics, performed
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not obtained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness observed the pilot perform a reverse half-Cuban eight during the initial takeoff climb. At approximately 500 feet above ground level (AGL) the pilot attempted to complete the maneuver from the inverted position; however, approximately 30 degrees nose down, the airplane impacted the ground. The witness further stated that the airplane 'did not have enough altitude to clear the ground.' The pilot purchased the airplane new in June, 1997. It was estimated that the pilot had about 30 hours experience in the make and model accident airplane. The pilot had logged a total of 272 flights which consisted of 113 hours during the month of April, 1997 in a Swift S-1 glider. The pilot was previously named a United States National Glider Aerobatic Champion. Interviews with two professional aerobatic pilots indicated that an altitude of 500 feet AGL was required to complete the maneuver in a glider. For the make and model accident airplane, a minimum altitude would be 600 feet AGL depending on conditions such as airspeed and density altitude, and that their personal minimums were 800 feet AGL.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to obtain the proper altitude/clearance above the terrain, to perform an aerobatic maneuver. A factor was the pilot's lack of total experience in make and model.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98FA017
- Event ID
- 20001208X09092
- Case number
- NYC98FA017
- 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: 507e8e3491611e9a4069b1accc4be345b6a0675fa8f276f31359801629b14ffb; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:47:09.126Z.