LAX08CA123 · Ervin SHA Glasair
Ervin SHA Glasair · Accident: hard landing
From Diamond M Ranch Airport (90CL) to Diamond M Ranch Airport (90CL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08CA123
- 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
Ervin SHA Glasair
- Aircraft type
- Ervin SHA GLASAIR
- 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
- N41SS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Diamond M Ranch Airport (90CL), Elk Creek, CATo Diamond M Ranch Airport (90CL), Elk Creek, CA
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- Defining eventThe 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following a normal approach for landing on the short grass runway, the airplane touched down two times before the pilot added power to abort the landing. As he added power to takeoff, the airplane touched down a third time. He tried to hold the airplane in ground effect to allow the airplane to accelerate to climb airspeed; however, he was not able to maintain the airplane's altitude and the airplane touched down a final time. As the airplane bounced into the air, he made a turn to the left to avoid a fence and trees at the end of the runway. The airplane was headed towards an enclosed valley, so the pilot made a slight right turn towards uphill tree covered terrain. He reduced the power and placed the airplane in a nose high attitude prior to colliding with a tall tree.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudged landing flare, inadequate bounced landing recovery technique, and failure to attain and maintain an adquate airspeed during an aborted landing. Contributing to the accident was the short runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08CA123
- Event ID
- 20080610X00822
- Case number
- LAX08CA123
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 1c74669d8b87b41e061430ab0c9105b115ae483ef8169adfa21b25feb51771e9; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:44:50.127Z.