ERA14LA174 · N/A
N/A · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Patillas Airport (X64) to Patillas Airport (X64)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA174
- 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
N/A
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Emerito Guzman
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Patillas Airport (X64), Patillas, PRTo Patillas Airport (X64), Patillas, PR
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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 in flight
- 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 accident flight was reportedly the pilot's first flight in the unregistered airplane. There were no witnesses to the accident; the airplane was found about 750 ft from the runway threshold on an approximate 45-degree angle from the runway. Although there were no witnesses or other recorded data available documenting the moments leading up to the accident, the location of the wreckage in relation to the runway suggested that the airplane might have been turning from the base to the final leg of the airport traffic pattern when the accident occurred. The orientation of the wreckage was consistent with the airplane having been in an aerodynamic stall/spin at impact.
Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or anomalies. Paperwork recovered from the pilot's home indicated that the airplane was based on a commercially available set of plans for an ultralight aircraft and that the pilot used these plans when he constructed the airplane. However, he made modifications that could have resulted in unanticipated adverse handling characteristics. Federal Aviation Administration guidance on amateur-built aircraft recommends developing a flight test plan to detect any hazardous operating characteristics and to determine the airplane's performance and operating envelope; however, no documents were located indicating that the pilot had developed or intended to perform a flight test plan.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control during approach for landing, which resulted in a stall/spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA174
- Event ID
- 20140327X61657
- Case number
- ERA14LA174
- 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: c5555f0fa97d5504532ecdc05d2b246fba85bf9db16f69cc2df6761b4b25470f; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:12:16.269Z.