ERA14LA005 · Aerotek PITTS S 1T
Aerotek PITTS S 1T · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Punta Gorda Airport (PGD) to Punta Gorda Airport (PGD)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA005
- 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
Aerotek PITTS S 1T
- Aircraft type
- Aerotek PITTS S 1T
- 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
- N53CG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Punta Gorda Airport (PGD), Punta Gorda, FLTo Punta Gorda Airport (PGD), Punta Gorda, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1982)
- 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/owner reported that he conducted a "normal" three-point landing on the runway centerline with a normal roll in the tailwheel-equipped airplane. While decelerating through 50 mph, the airplane "began to jerk to the right," and the pilot corrected with a left rudder input. The airplane responded "somewhat," but it continued to veer right. The pilot applied full power and full-aft control stick input to abort the landing, but the airplane departed the runway to the right and nosed over, which resulted in substantial damage to the engine compartment, cockpit, and vertical fin structures.
The pilot was concerned that the airplane had sustained a structural failure in the area that surrounded the attachment point for the right main landing gear because it had been repaired and modified after the airplane experienced a similar loss of directional control event about 1 year previously. Therefore, he requested a detailed examination of the modifications, welding, and landing gear installation conducted during the previous repair. The examination of the welds revealed that they were intact, and no anomalies were noted. All of the damage to the landing gear system was due to overstress. In a written statement following the previous event, the pilot stated that the loss of directional control resulted from the length of his legs, the geometry of his size-13 shoe and the rudder pedals, and the confined space that enclosed them. He attempted to alleviate the issue by changing his footwear, but his alternate choice of footwear only aggravated the rudder control problem. He stated that the application of left rudder resulted in the inadvertent application of right brake and the subsequent loss of directional control.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of directional control during landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s decision to operate the airplane with known ergonomic restrictions due to his size.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA005
- Event ID
- 20131021X00632
- Case number
- ERA14LA005
- 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: 5d5490d8984ebd71254507f3c1f332de4728fb7b8cdd6f6a292753096cfc59c2; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:59:28.002Z.