ERA10LA251 · Interstate S1A UNDESIGNAT
Interstate S1A UNDESIGNAT · Accident during initial climb
From Lakeland, FL to Winter Haven Regional Airport - Gilbert Field (GIF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA251
- 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
Interstate S1A UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Interstate S1
- 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
- N34926
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakeland, FLTo Winter Haven Regional Airport - Gilbert Field (GIF), Winter Haven, 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff, the airplane climbed about 500 feet and turned to the left. It subsequently entered a nose-dive configuration and descended rapidly. As the airplane neared the ground, it appeared to assume a level attitude consistent with the pilot recovering from the nose dive. The airplane clipped a tree and landed hard in a field. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed three large propeller strikes along the ground. Flight control continuity was established to all flight control surfaces and examination of the engine and system components revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions. No conclusive physical evidence was found to determine the reason for the sudden loss of altitude and resultant hard landing.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from terrain for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA251
- Event ID
- 20100503X83546
- Case number
- ERA10LA251
- 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: b8a2f0e59b2193c7ec29fc6574207c6310d342598b86c05750b2be614213e916; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:58:37.274Z.