ATL05CA060 · Savage RV-8
Savage RV-8 · Accident: nose over during landing
From Wayne Executive Jetport (KGWW) to Goldsboro, NC
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05CA060
- 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
Savage RV-8
- Aircraft type
- Savage RV-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
- N187WS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wayne Executive Jetport (KGWW), Goldsboro, NCTo Goldsboro, NC
- 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
- Nose over
- 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
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 he entered a left downwind for runway 03 and the windsock showed light to moderate winds. The pilot performed a wheels-landing touchdown, and during the landing roll at approximately 60 to 65 knots, the tail of the airplane lifted. The pilot stated he applied full aft stick, but the tail continued to rise, the propeller struck the ground, and the airplane nosed over. The pilot, who was the builder of the airplane, reported no mechanical malfunction with the airplane. He stated he completed a modification to the rudder pedals a few days earlier, and the change allowed his feet to sit higher on the pedals. He stated he believed he unintentionally applied light brake pressure during the touchdown and landing roll. A review of recorded weather data from Seymour Johnson AFB, Goldsboro, North Carolina, located 11 nautical miles east of the accident site, revealed at 1355 reported winds were from 240 degrees at 9 knots, variable between 190 and 290 degrees.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive braking during landing roll, which resulted in a nose-over. A factor was the tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05CA060
- Event ID
- 20050404X00397
- Case number
- ATL05CA060
- 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: 2e33a2825df4be694bfa0edbb13640dadba9a84c3a66cd30f19d84dc5dcf25cf; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:03:55.221Z.