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DEN08LA031 · Evektor-Aerotechnik Sportstar Plus

15 Nov 2007 · Erie, CO, United States

Evektor-Aerotechnik Sportstar Plus · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing

From Yeysk Airport (EIK) to Yeysk Airport (EIK)

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Event

NTSB case
DEN08LA031
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

Evektor-Aerotechnik Sportstar Plus

Aircraft type
Evektor SPORTSTAR
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
N617EV
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Yeysk Airport (EIK)To Yeysk Airport (EIK)
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
Loss of control on ground/water
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

  • Dual student › Directional 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

During the final approach for a full stop landing, the airplane was configured to an airspeed of 60 knots and a flap setting of 15 degrees. The instructor reported, "The airplane was flared and touched down on the main wheels then the nose wheel was lowered at approximately A2 taxiway slightly right of centerline. I instructed the student that we would continue to roll-out and decelerate to the end of the runway to avoid using too much brake or rudder pressure due to their extreme sensitivity. I then instructed the student to apply light rudder pressure to realign the aircraft with the runway centerline. Ample left rudder pressure was applied and countered with opposite right rudder pressure resulting in pilot induced oscillations. The aircraft swerved dramatically from left to right and then again to the left and right where it exited the runway surface. The plane came to a stop in a drainage ditch on the right side of runway 33 and slightly north of the closed runway." During the traffic pattern and landing, the flight instructor and student were both on the airplane controls. The winds were reported as calm during the accident. The flight training supplement for the accident airplane instructs pilots not to apply main wheel brakes unintentionally when taxiing. The flight training supplement also states that aircraft steering at higher speeds is more sensitive, therefore smaller deflections of the rudder control pedals are required to maintain directional control. Examination of the airplane revealed the nose gear was bent aft and the firewall was buckled.

Probable cause

The student pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing. Contributing factors were the delayed remedial action and inadequate supervision by the flight instructor, and the ditch.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record DEN08LA031
Event ID
20071119X01807
Case number
DEN08LA031
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: 70a996b831c5de58beba9101ab37056afb1047a70e53e8c5485d390bfae08961; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:16:27.997Z.