IAD04LA043 · Great Lakes 2T1-A2
Great Lakes 2T1-A2 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during landing
From Russellville Logan County Airport (4M7) to Elkton, KY
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD04LA043
- 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
Great Lakes 2T1-A2
- Aircraft type
- Great Lakes 2
- 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
- N1XG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Russellville Logan County Airport (4M7), Russellville, KYTo Elkton, KY
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial Possible conflict
Cause areas
- Airport facilities, runway marking › Not maintained
- Airport personnel › Other airport/runway maintenance, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Two airplanes, in loose formation, made a left break over the runway, entered the traffic pattern, and completed a landing to the turf runway. Although visible from the air, both the runway marker and stanchion were obscured by overgrown grass during the landing rollout. During its rollout, the second airplane struck an electrical conduit mounted on a stanchion, and sustained minor damage. The runway boundary marker was half of a plastic barrel, cut lengthwise, and the stanchion was about 6 feet outboard the boundary marker, 8-10 inches high. Although visible from the air, both the runway marker and stanchion were obscured by overgrown grass during the landing rollout. Boundary markers were supposed to be located about 300 feet apart, on each side of the runway; however, two consecutive left-side runway boundary markers were missing. The left-side runway boundary markers ran almost the entire length of the airport property, about in the middle of the airport's width. One-third of the airport property had been mowed the day before the accident. The mowed area was approximately L- shaped, and included the length of the field to the left of the runway, and the approach end of the runway, up to the second boundary marker. The rest of the runway had last been mowed 8 days prior to the accident, and the pilots thought they were landing on an "imaginary centerline" in the middle of the airport.
Probable cause
The pilot's misidentification of the runway, which resulted in the airplane striking an obscured runway marker. Factors were the tailwheel airplane's reduced forward and lateral visibility during landing rollout and inadequate maintenance of the airport facility, including the failure to replace missing runway boundary markers and a confusing mowing pattern adjacent to the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD04LA043
- Event ID
- 20040929X01520
- Case number
- IAD04LA043
- 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: 5c22467e789a4ba12c975eb765fc3e8609e907d5aa9b5257ff91cddbe458425a; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:51:52.092Z.