ERA11LA397 · Gates Lear JET 35
Robinson Air Crane Gates Lear JET 35 · Accident: windshear or thunderstorm during landing
From Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF) to Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11LA397
- 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
Gates Lear JET 35
- Aircraft type
- Learjet 35
- 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
- N110UN
- Operator
- Robinson Air Crane
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF), Opa-Locka, FLTo Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF), Opa-Locka, 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 · 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
- Windshear or thunderstorm
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
When the pilot made his initial radio contact with the tower air traffic controller, he acknowledged receiving the airport’s latest automatic terminal information service information. As the airplane approached the airport, the controller made several announcements that there was an area of weather about 5 miles in diameter with light-to-moderate precipitation over the airport. The pilot reported that, during the landing, at an altitude of about 30 feet above the runway, the airplane encountered windshear. The airplane started to roll to the left, and the airspeed decreased by 20 knots. As the pilot attempted to regain control of the airplane, the right wingtip contacted the runway surface. A review of high resolution automated surface observation system data from the airport indicated that, 2 minutes before the accident, the wind was from 338 degrees at 4 knots. Subsequently, there was a steady increase in wind velocity to 15 knots 4 minutes after the accident. During this 6 minute period, the wind direction varied between 353 degrees and 011 degrees. Terminal Doppler weather radar data indicated strong convective activity northwest of the airport from 2 minutes before to 10 minutes after the accident with possible micro bursts and diverging winds near the surface from the time of the accident to 5 minutes after the accident.
Probable cause
The flightcrew’s inadvertent encounter with windshear during landing, which resulted in a loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11LA397
- Event ID
- 20110713X92151
- Case number
- ERA11LA397
- 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: a024ccc085f93573ba79e5dfca921badf377c1977bd6aca9065bd61feac37a3a; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:26:56.442Z.