ERA10LA121 · Luscombe 8A
Luscombe 8A · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Monticello Sky Ranch Airport (GA06) to Madison Municipal Airport (52A)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA121
- 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
Luscombe 8A
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N2750K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monticello Sky Ranch Airport (GA06), Monticello, GATo Madison Municipal Airport (52A), Madison, GA
- 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
The pilot landed on runway 14 with a tailwind and slowed the airplane to taxi speed in preparation to exit the runway. As the airplane neared the taxiway, it veered sharply to the right. The pilot corrected with left brake and full left rudder. The airplane then veered left and exited the left side of the runway. Upon contact with the unimproved surface, the right main landing gear collapsed and the right wing was damaged. The pilot initially stated that a gust of wind had caused him to ground loop and then later stated that a fractured tailwheel leaf spring had caused a loss of directional control. Metallurgical examination of the fractured leaf spring found no evidence of any preexisting cracking or corrosion, and the fracture surfaces were indicative of overstress. Tire marks observed on the runway were consistent with the main gear and tailwheel tires being in contact with the runway as the airplane departed. Wind reported near the time and location of the accident was from 270 degrees at 7 knots, varying between 247 and 307 degrees.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control while landing with a tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA121
- Event ID
- 20100120X52727
- Case number
- ERA10LA121
- 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: bb6e05848692652504e6ee809069179bc020e17de50e9b3feedd7b68986d8a59; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:38:18.526Z.