ERA09CA034 · Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA-5B
Blue Sky Flight Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA-5B · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR) to Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA034
- 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
Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA-5B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American AA-5
- 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
- N4540L
- Operator
- Blue Sky Flight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR), Bridgeport, CTTo Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR), Bridgeport, CT
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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 › Physical
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The solo student pilot of the Grumman AA5B stated he was maneuvering in his local training area when he experienced symptoms of "vertigo." The pilot was on a westerly heading in the late afternoon, looking through the propeller, at the onset of the symptoms. He managed to navigate back to his home airport, but during the landing, lost directional control, departed the runway, and collided with an airport sign. The pilot was not injured, but examination of his medical records revealed he was treated by a physician for symptoms of vertigo in the days following the accident. According to the Federal Aviation Administration Airplane Flying Handbook (FAA-H-8083-3A), flicker vertigo is defined as: "A disorienting condition caused from flickering light off the blades of the propeller."
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of directional control during landing and while suffering symptoms of vertigo.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA034
- Event ID
- 20081102X43844
- Case number
- ERA09CA034
- 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: bf7588c68c4da2048d41feb5d3347bbc9fc863556b83383682096b42795647cd; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:31:06.824Z.