DFW05FA065 · Ercoupe 415-C
Ercoupe 415-C · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Trent Lott International Airport (PQL) to Alexandria International Airport (AEX)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05FA065
- 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
- 1 · 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
Ercoupe 415-C
- Aircraft type
- Ercoupe 415
- 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
- N99452
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Trent Lott International Airport (PQL), Pascagoula, MSTo Alexandria International Airport (AEX), Alexandria, LA
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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 in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft 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
While entering the airport traffic pattern on a left downwind, at the conclusion of a 213 nautical mile cross country flight, the commercial pilot lost control of the airplane and the airplane impacted terrain in a nose low attitude on airport property. A witness located on one of the closed runways observed the airplane fly over a tree line with no erratic movements. As the airplane descended, it "went into an approximate 20 degree nose down attitude" and impacted the ground. There was no fire. Flight control continuity was established throughout the airframe at the accident site. No mechanical anomalies were noted with the engine or airframe. The 68-year old commercial pilot had purchased the 1946-vintage airplane approximately 2 months prior to the accident and he had accumulated a total of 3.9 hours on the airplane. The pilot had been denied his last medical certificate following his last examination in 1978. All radio communications between the pilot and the tower operator were reported as normal. The pilot's autopsy did not produce any signs of incapacitation.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control while maneuvering to land.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05FA065
- Event ID
- 20050207X00146
- Case number
- DFW05FA065
- 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: ba9ff91e4b32c522907bb498560663b1bb19610981662f22716c31c3a2cabd19; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:07:50.927Z.