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DEN87LA079 · North American NAVION

3 Apr 1987 · Los Alamos, NM, United States

North American NAVION · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during landing

From Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF) to an unrecorded destination

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Event

NTSB case
DEN87LA079
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

North American NAVION

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
N91735
Operator
Richard B. Olwin · private individual
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF), Santa Fe, NMTo 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
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 encounter with weather
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

  • Dual student › Compensation for wind conditions, not attained
  • Dual student › Flare, misjudged
  • Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, inadequate
  • Pilot in command(cfi) › Wrong runway, selected

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

THE INSTRUCTOR PLT WAS GIVING CROSS WIND INSTRUCTION TO A PRE-SOLO STUDENT PLT. DURING A CROSS WIND LANDING ATTEMPT, THE ACFT TOUCHED DOWN HARD, BREAKING OFF THE RIGHT MAIN LANDING GEAR. THE WINDS WERE OBSERVED AT THE TIME OF TOUCHDOWN TO BE 150 DEGREES AT 12 KNOTS, A QUARTERING TAIL WIND FOR RWY 27. AFTER LANDING, THE ACFT SKIDDED TO THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE LANDING AREA UNTIL COMING TO REST IN THE ARPT BOUNDARY FENCE.

Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record DEN87LA079
Event ID
20001213X30634
Case number
DEN87LA079
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: f4503479832d34da6ef907a4a0092a635f138faf68099a237cc55b903f72fc19; retrieved 2026-09-23T13:21:28.609Z.