CHI03LA295 · Luscombe 8A
Luscombe 8A · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Erie Air Park (3H5) to Maquoketa Municipal Airport (OQW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA295
- 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
Luscombe 8A
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N1954B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Erie Air Park (3H5), Erie, ILTo Maquoketa Municipal Airport (OQW), Maquoketa, IA
- 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
- Pilot in command › Brakes(normal), excessive
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane nosed over while landing on runway 33. The pilot reported the airplane "touched down smoothly on the [main landing gear]" and he held some forward control stick to keep the main landing gear on the runway. The pilot reported that during the landing rollout the airplane began to drift to the left and he "applied right brake" to correct the drift. The pilot stated that the airplane then "swerved to the right" and he "applied left brake without releasing the [right brake]." The airplane immediately nosed over on the runway centerline. The pilot reported there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures during the accident flight. The local winds were recorded as 040 degrees true at 8 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive use of the brake system, which resulted in directional control not being maintained during the landing. A factor to the accident was the crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA295
- Event ID
- 20030903X01451
- Case number
- CHI03LA295
- 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: 1810aaa4b21c80d46c6998d1b361056da6d43e54bf001aebff6a1a51ae0cce45; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:22:51.179Z.