ATL98LA126 · Aeronca 65-TAC (L-3) 65-TAC (L-
Aeronca 65-TAC (L-3) 65-TAC (L- · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Hawkins County Airport (RVN) to AAP · Houston, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL98LA126
- 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
Aeronca 65-TAC (L-3) 65-TAC (L-
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 65
- 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
- N39309
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hawkins County Airport (RVN), HAWKINS COUNTY, TNTo AAP · Houston, TX
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following a landing on runway 32, the airplane veered off the runway to the right, continued down an embankment, then nosed over inverted. Post crash examination of the airplane revealed the right tail wheel castering spring was absent, which the pilot believed resulted in the loss of control. The airport manager noted that the skid marks on the runway indicated a gradual right turn shortly after touchdown, with the left main tire mark three times wider than the right, and the tail wheel skid mark occurring about 15 feet northwest of the main tire marks. He stated that a loss of the right castering spring would have resulted in the airplane veering to the left. The pilot had 128 total flight hours with six hours in the same make and model airplane. There was a four knot cross wind from 030 degrees.
Probable cause
The pilots failure to maintain directional control of the airplane during landing. A factor was the pilot's lack of experience in the same make and model airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL98LA126
- Event ID
- 20001211X11004
- Case number
- ATL98LA126
- 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: 6c37eefec983a35f67c6bb12b6573fb8c24a0a740cf4908af28daef455d24ca1; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:48:20.585Z.