ATL01LA078 · McDonnell Douglas DC-3
McDonnell Douglas DC-3 · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Moore County Airport (SOP) to Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL01LA078
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
McDonnell Douglas DC-3
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-3
- 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
- N3239T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Moore County Airport (SOP), Southern Pines, NCTo Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX), Titusville, FL
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- On ground/water 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Ground loop/swerve, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an attempted landing at the Titusville Space Coast Regional Airport in Titusville, Florida, the airplane bounced three feet into the air. A decision was made by the PIC to go-around. Upon application of power, the airplane turned sharply left. On the second bounce, the airplane veered left, the left wing came up, and the airplane veered right. On the third bounce, the airplane was pointing about 80 degrees nose right of the runway heading. The airplane sustained substantial damage during the ground loop.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during a bounced landing, resulting in a ground loop and subesequent collision with the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL01LA078
- Event ID
- 20010712X01398
- Case number
- ATL01LA078
- 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, coordinates. 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: 109ab5f6b5130a2eba6a5f981075b823c495d9db36ab50154f18c98149feaea7; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:47:15.467Z.