ERA09CA008 · Aviat Aircraft Inc A-1B
Aviat Aircraft Inc A-1B · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From J9F · Concord, NC to Lake Norman Airpark (14A)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA008
- 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
Aviat Aircraft Inc A-1B
- Aircraft type
- Aviat A-1
- 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
- N367SA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From J9F · Concord, NCTo Lake Norman Airpark (14A), Mooresville, NC
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, while landing an Aviat A-1B on runway 14, during the flare/touchdown, the "airplane bounced once, and then settled gently on the main wheels." The airplane began to drift slightly to the right and he added left aileron and left rudder to align his longitudinal axis with the centerline of the runway. At that point, the tail wheel touched down and abruptly swung to the right, causing the airplane to become almost perpendicular with the runway. The right main gear collapsed and the right wing impacted the ground. The pilot and passenger egressed the airplane without injury. The pilot also reported that the winds were light and variable at the time of the accident. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector found that when the pilot bounced the airplane, he had struck the tail wheel and damaged it. When the damaged tail wheel touched down the second time, it caused the airplane to ground loop. The pilot's total flight time in all aircraft was recorded at 210.7 hours, with 32.1 hours in make and model. The pilot stated that he has logged 1 hour in make and model in the last 90 days and 1 hour in make and model in the last 30 days.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare while landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of recent experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA008
- Event ID
- 20081008X01441
- Case number
- ERA09CA008
- 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: db79df7eef4451d92714bc40106610063cd7e5628e5f42828af90ff5c4454b52; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:26:14.349Z.