ERA10LA063 · Curtiss Wright TRAVEL AIR
Lucky Lindy's Flying Service Curtiss Wright TRAVEL AIR · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Page Field (FMY) to Page Field (FMY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA063
- 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
Curtiss Wright TRAVEL AIR
- Aircraft type
- Curtiss Wright TRAVEL AIR
- 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
- N3823
- Operator
- Lucky Lindy's Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Page Field (FMY), Fort Myers, FLTo Page Field (FMY), Fort Myers, FL
- 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
- 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 on ground
- 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
During approach, the pilot of the tailwheel-equipped biplane flew along at 20-30 feet above the runway until he was at midfield. The biplane touched down, bounced back in to the air, touched down again, and bounced once more prior to touching down for a third time in a nose-high attitude. The biplane then veered to the right, the right wing dipped, and the biplane cartwheeled, coming to rest inverted. The pilot had 60 hours of flight experience in the biplane. The previous owner had advised the pilot that landing the biplane took patience to land it perfectly and that attempting to land the biplane on asphalt with low experience could cause the biplane to bump repeatedly. He also advised that if the pilot pulled back on the control stick too soon during landing it could result in ballooning and porpoising.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper recovery from a bounced landing and failure to maintain directional control, which resulted in a ground loop. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's minimal experience in the airplane make and model.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA063
- Event ID
- 20091114X40724
- Case number
- ERA10LA063
- 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: e96687f22371eb3620ff1c639f334c7774e261e00c1011919ccb8afae055b7c7; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:29:39.860Z.