WPR14CA157 · Robert A Miller MURPHY REBEL ELITE
Robert A Miller MURPHY REBEL ELITE · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Roundup Airport (KRPX) to Roundup Airport (KRPX)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14CA157
- 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
Robert A Miller MURPHY REBEL ELITE
- Aircraft type
- Robert A Miller MURPHY REBEL ELITE
- 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
- N3552J
- Operator
- Miller Robert A
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roundup Airport (KRPX), Roundup, MTTo Roundup Airport (KRPX), Roundup, MT
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2012)
- 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 was practicing takeoffs and landings in his amateur built experimental airplane. Earlier in the day, he had accomplished several successful landings, and then took a short break. After the break, he flew the airplane again, remained in the airport traffic pattern, and completed an uneventful takeoff and full stop landing. He took off again, made a circuit of the traffic pattern, and set up for a second landing. The pilot described the approach as "perfect," and noted that he was "over the threshold with just the right altitude and airspeed." The touchdown was normal, but during the latter portion of the landing rollout the airplane began to veer to the left. The pilot applied right rudder; the airplane turned right, and exited the right side of the paved runway. About 15 feet off the runway, the left landing gear entered a depression associated with a drainage culvert. The left landing gear was displaced aft and up, and the left wing and nose of the airplane struck the ground. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and left wing. The pilot did not cite any mechanical problems with the airplane. In his written report on the accident, the pilot noted that pilots must be "really quick" on the rudder and "can't relax until the airplane is back in the hangar" when flying a taildragger.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of directional control while landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14CA157
- Event ID
- 20140403X43403
- Case number
- WPR14CA157
- 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: 39de19717e662020abaeb88860ebafd4fe7f9568727032a4db05b15205566253; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:28:42.756Z.