ERA13FA225 · Grumman G-44
Grumman G-44 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during landing
From B Flat Farm Airport (3NK8) to B Flat Farm Airport (3NK8)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13FA225
- 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
- 1 · 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
Grumman G-44
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G-44
- 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
- N8AS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From B Flat Farm Airport (3NK8), Copake, NYTo B Flat Farm Airport (3NK8), Copake, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 70 years (built 1943)
- 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
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses reported observing the twin-engine amphibious airplane flying southbound low above a river and hearing the engine running. The airplane then made a 180-degree left turn, which was consistent with the pilot flying a tight traffic pattern before attempting a water landing. The airplane then descended, leveled off above the water, and suddenly banked left. The airplane's nose and left pontoon then struck the water, and the airplane nosed over, caught fire, and sank.
Postrecovery examination of the wreckage revealed that the landing gear was in the "up" position and that the flaps were extended, which indicates that the airplane had been configured for a water landing. No evidence of any preimpact failures or malfunctions of the airplane or engines was found that would have precluded normal operation.
At the time of the accident, a light breeze was blowing, the river was at slack tide, and the water conditions were calm, all of which were conducive to glassy water conditions. It is likely that the glassy water conditions adversely affected the pilot's depth perception and led to his inability to correctly judge the airplane's height above the water. He subsequently flared the airplane too high, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle-of-attack, entering an aerodynamic stall, and impacting the water in a nose-low attitude.
Probable cause
The pilot’s misjudgment of the airplane’s altitude above the water and early flare for a landing on water with a glassy condition, which led to the airplane exceeding its critical angle-of-attack and experiencing an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13FA225
- Event ID
- 20130503X72652
- Case number
- ERA13FA225
- 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, coordinates. 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: 3367c6a3bbc92c905246a2b26e92a6a3f03d4658cd23c8d7d9ed8665621ae1a7; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:56:19.914Z.