FTW00LA129 · Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) 415-D
Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) 415-D · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From TA22 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA129
- 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
Ercoupe (Eng & Research Corp.) 415-D
- 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
- N99470
- Operator
- Roger Dale Brown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From TA22To 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- 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
During an approach to the runway, the student pilot allowed the airplane to descend and impact the top of an embankment and a fence located prior to the runway. According to the pilot, the airplane had encountered a downdraft. At 1053, the reported wind at the nearest reporting point, located 24 nautical miles south of the accident site, was from 310 degrees at 15 knots gusting to 19 knots. According to an FAA inspector, the student pilot 'was not and had never been endorsed by an authorized flight instructor for solo flight.' Prior to the accident, the student pilot had accumulated 14 total flight hours, of which 11 hours were in the accident airplane.
Probable cause
The student pilot's inadequate compensation for wind conditions. A factor was the downdraft wind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA129
- Event ID
- 20001212X20818
- Case number
- FTW00LA129
- 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: 98f166669113fd0ca57c3832df726d986d754209d852f947e54bc5fbb66db72b; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:15:01.059Z.