ATL05LA078 · Earnest Jodel D-9
Earnest Jodel D-9 · Accident: undershoot on approach
From General Dewitt Spain Airport (KM01) to Nashville, TN
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05LA078
- 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
Earnest Jodel D-9
- Aircraft type
- Earnest JODEL D-9
- 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
- N5164J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From General Dewitt Spain Airport (KM01), Memphis, TNTo Nashville, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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
- Undershoot
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Distance/altitude, misjudged
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 purchased the one-seat airplane and had never flown this make and model before. A witness standing at the airport's midfield reported the airplane's takeoff appeared normal, and the airplane entered the airport's traffic pattern and made one bounced landing. Witnesses stated the airplane then made several traffic patterns, and each time around, the airplane got lower and slower. According to a witness, on the airplane's last pattern, it turned base and was very slow with the nose high, and when it turned final, it spun about half a turn to the left and dove straight into the ground. Examination of the accident site revealed the airplane came to rest nose-down approximately 500 feet short of the runway 34 threshold. Examination of the airframe and powerplant revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudgment of distance/altitude, and his failure to maintain adequate airspeed resulting in a stall and subsequent undershoot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05LA078
- Event ID
- 20050510X00580
- Case number
- ATL05LA078
- 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: a51c598c285508d85f1b83f30f691a1d9c9ada2fdbff6b754d5f42b4af1fb672; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:03:49.408Z.