MIA01LA020 · John S. Eberle PITTS SPECIAL S1S PITTS SPEC
John S. Eberle PITTS SPECIAL S1S PITTS SPEC · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Sebring Regional Airport (SEF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01LA020
- 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
John S. Eberle PITTS SPECIAL S1S PITTS SPEC
- Aircraft type
- John S Eberle PITTS SPECIAL S1S
- 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
- N39124
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sebring Regional Airport (SEF)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
- 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
- Landing gear, tailwheel assembly › Worn
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he made a 3 point touchdown and the tailwheel immediately began to hammer or shimmy. The airplane began tracking about 10 degrees to the right and then started to turn to the right. He locked the left brake but could not prevent the airplane from ground looping to the right. He stated that examination of the tailwheel assembly after the accident showed the bearings in the assembly were worn out from dirt getting into the bearings, and the assembly was free to move sideways about 1/2 inch. He stated that this caused the shimmy during landing and that he normally operated from a dirt strip.
Probable cause
Improper inspection of the tailwheel assembly by the pilot which resulted in shimmy of the tailwheel assembly during landing due to a worn bearing caused by dirt infiltration which resulted in the pilot being unable to control the airplane and the airplane ground looping to the right.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01LA020
- Event ID
- 20001212X22221
- Case number
- MIA01LA020
- 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: 22006732295f8eae671d916c2be8ac60b18eee101c745182ed987bc796b4f353; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:21:01.684Z.