FTW98FA203 · Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) 415-C
Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) 415-C · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Olustee Municipal Airport (F09) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA203
- 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
Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) 415-C
- Aircraft type
- Ercoupe (eng Research 415
- 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
- N87125
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Olustee Municipal Airport (F09)To not recorded
- 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 · turn to landing area (emergency)
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot with a passenger onboard, had completed 2 or 3 touch and go landings to runway 35. During the following takeoff, while turning left crosswind, the aircraft 'shuddered' and entered what the pilot believed was a 'slip stall.' He 'vaguely' remembered struggling to recover the aircraft from the stall and seeing the end of the runway over his left shoulder and thinking 'we have got to get back over there.' Subsequently, the aircraft impacted the ground. The wreckage path was oriented on a magnetic heading of 130 degrees, and the airplane came to rest approximately 320 feet from the departure end of runway 35. No structural or mechanical anomalies were observed during an examination of the airplane. According to the FAA Southwest Region Flight Surgeon, the blood alcohol concentration of 0.044% detected at the hospital and the 0.029% detected at the Civil Aeromedical Institute (CAMI) 'may have affected the pilot's performance, but he would not have been impaired.'
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper decision to attempt an 180 degree turn to return to the takeoff runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA203
- Event ID
- 20001211X10049
- Case number
- FTW98FA203
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-05-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f8d9e3b009441eb7496aed08a8a2b270ec5c724b1a898d92dee10d8d256bf3eb; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:36:09.898Z.