NYC99LA134 · Saliba LONG EZ
Saliba LONG EZ · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From W32 · Clinton, MD to Middle Georgia Regional Airport (MCN)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA134
- 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
Saliba LONG EZ
- Aircraft type
- Saliba LONG EZ
- 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
- N555L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From W32 · Clinton, MDTo Middle Georgia Regional Airport (MCN), Macon, GA
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Another pilot in the airport traffic pattern saw the accident airplane, and requested the accident pilot's intentions. There was no response, but the accident airplane appeared to enter a right base for the active runway. The airplane overshot the runway, then turned back, and entered a left base for the same runway. It overshot the final approach course, but corrected with a steep turn, and continued making 'S' turns during the final approach. The airplane then pitched up and mushed into trees about 200 yards short of the runway. The airplane's canopy was found about 2 miles from the accident scene, and the latching mechanism exhibited no sign of overstress, or of being latched. Another owner of a Long EZ stated that the airplane would have been difficult to control without a canopy.
Probable cause
The separation of the airplane canopy for undetermined reasons, the diminished controllability of the airplane, and the pilot's failure to maintain airspeed resulting in a stall/mush into trees short of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA134
- Event ID
- 20001212X19089
- Case number
- NYC99LA134
- 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: 0c46c83f93afd6e416d618c44a31d31b37b4f97af8d4d9a3721be5bdd1a67aa0; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:04:32.919Z.