WPR13CA213 · Aviat A-1B
Flightline Aviat A-1B · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Laurel Municipal Airport (6S8) to Laurel Municipal Airport (6S8)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13CA213
- 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
Aviat A-1B
- Aircraft type
- Aviat A-1
- 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
- N302MX
- Operator
- Flightline
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laurel Municipal Airport (6S8), Laurel, MTTo Laurel Municipal Airport (6S8), Laurel, MT
- 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 · aborted after 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was conducting a wildlife survey flight and had been airborne about 2.5 hours, when the observer said that he would like to take a break. At that time, the flight was over a high mesa covered in short grass, which the pilot decided was a suitable landing area. The touchdown was smooth, but the airplane encountered undulating terrain during the rollout and began to bounce. The pilot added full power to abort the landing, and the airplane's speed began to increase; however, the pilot was unable to take off before impacting a bush. The airplane traveled several hundred feet down a ravine and came to an abrupt stop. The airplane's main landing gear collapsed, and both wings sustained substantial damage. The pilot estimated that the density altitude at the landing site was about 8,950 feet. He stated that the accident could have been avoided had he "made the decision not to land off-airport in that area at such density altitudes." The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to land on rough terrain at a high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13CA213
- Event ID
- 20130502X33418
- Case number
- WPR13CA213
- 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: 62b915cee25c3fe41749d584abee8a8b755325833ef01e86c81a2a13aef49c76; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:23:59.434Z.