SEA07LA196 · North American F-51D
North American F-51D · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Camarillo International Airport (CMA) to Cunnamulla Airport (CMA)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07LA196
- 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
North American F-51D
- Aircraft type
- North American F-51
- 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
- N51TK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Camarillo International Airport (CMA), Camarillo, CATo Cunnamulla Airport (CMA)
- 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 go-around
- 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
- Substantial
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
The pilot was making his first supervised solo flight in the same airplane that he received 31.5 hours of dual instruction in the 47 days preceding the accident. The flight instructor who provided the training witnessed the accident and reported that the pilot performed a "normal" takeoff followed by a left pattern to runway 26 with a "normal tail low wheel landing." He noted that as the airplane made contact with the ground, the pilot "had not pulled his throttle back to idle, as the noise level of the engine appeared greater than idle." After rolling 50 to 100 feet, the tail appeared to rise slightly, indicating the pilot was applying slight forward stick to pin the airplane to the ground. This was followed quickly by the rapid lowering of the tail to the point where the tailwheel struck the ground with a "loud bang noise." The airplane then "leaped back into the air" and the pilot applied takeoff power. The airplane pitched nose high and rolled left to the inverted position consistent with a torque induced roll. The upper surface of the left wing contacted the ground first, followed by the propeller and the canopy. The instructor expressed the opinion that the pilot "failed to successfully execute a standard go-around procedure after experiencing unexpected flight due to the lowering of the tail prematurely with power still on after touchdown."
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during a go-around. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of experience in the make and model of airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07LA196
- Event ID
- 20070720X00970
- Case number
- SEA07LA196
- 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: 5eb132d24721cbb77536a8e4e9611306516ff79c562c0cb121da435c7c3fa387; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:28:42.334Z.