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MIA02LA129 · Taylorcraft F21B

6 Jul 2002 · Somerville, TN, United States

Taylorcraft F21B · Accident: hard landing

From Lee Field (2D1) to Fayette County Airport (FYE)

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Event

NTSB case
MIA02LA129
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

Taylorcraft F21B

Aircraft type
Taylorcraft F21
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
N4418F
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Lee Field (2D1), Alliance, OHTo Fayette County Airport (FYE), Somerville, TN
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
Hard landing
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 › Flare, improper

Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot stated that on final approach to land he lowered the nose of the airplane to lose the excess altitude, but the airspeed increased, so in an attempt to reach the target airspeed he pulled back on the controls as the airplane neared the landing runway and stalled the airplane about 20 feet above the runway. He said that the airplane descended impacting the ground, and came to rest about 20 feet off the runway, incurring damage. Prior to the accident there had been no mechanical failure or malfunction with the airplane or its systems.

Probable cause

The pilot's improper landing flare resulting in a hard landing and damage to the airplane.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record MIA02LA129
Event ID
20020712X01103
Case number
MIA02LA129
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: 3573dfc905b1f6a0bbfc1cd561b80cf0fd0bdfc80262342206f640f1f038b1a1; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:40:43.235Z.