MIA08LA166 · Costruzioni Aeronautiche P2002 Sierra
Costruzioni Aeronautiche P2002 Sierra · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From 1N4 · Woodbine, NJ to 1N4
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA08LA166
- 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
Costruzioni Aeronautiche P2002 Sierra
- Aircraft type
- Costruzioni Aeronautiche P2002
- 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
- N494ES
- Operator
- David C. Rola · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From 1N4 · Woodbine, NJTo 1N4
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot departed and remained in the traffic pattern intending on performing touch-and-go landings. While on final approach with full flaps extended, flying at 10 feet above ground level, the pilot slowed the airplane to 38 knots indicated airspeed (KIAS), though 40 KIAS is the recommended touchdown speed. He reportedly landed, bounced 10 to 15 feet, and applied power to go-around, and he allowed the airplane to decelerate and stall. The airplane was equipped with an electronic flight instrumentation system (EFIS0 that records parameters every 5 seconds including time, date, indicated airspeed, GPS coordinates, ground speed, pitch, pressure altitude, vertical G’s, roll, heading, and slip. Readout of the EFIS revealed the entire accident flight was recorded. Data downloaded from the EFIS indicated that before the airplane stalled the pitch attitude (in degrees) increased to 11.94. The airplane rolled to the left and impacted grass to the left of the runway. There was no preimpact failure or malfunction of the airplane or its systems. The 75 hour student pilot stated that he was under stress due to an issue related to work, and he should not have been flying that day. He also reported, "he was much less focused than he should have been."
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during a go-around. Contributing to the accident was the student pilot's degraded emotional/mental state due to stress.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA08LA166
- Event ID
- 20080913X01446
- Case number
- MIA08LA166
- 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. 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: 6b8e51d3ac3b3ffab44c2da05c3975e139b1f27de25a17f09079054d6af739a3; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:12:21.322Z.