WPR14CA266 · Luscombe 8A A
Luscombe 8A A · Accident: nose over/nose down while taxiing
From Tucson International Airport (KTUS) to Tucson International Airport (KTUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14CA266
- 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
Luscombe 8A A
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N77917
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tucson International Airport (KTUS), Tucson, AZTo Tucson International Airport (KTUS), Tucson, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 68 years (built 1946)
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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 from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The solo student pilot was taxiing in a tailwheel equipped airplane for takeoff on the second leg of a solo cross-country flight. During the taxi, she noticed she was approaching a hold short line and applied the brakes to stop at the line. She said while depressing the heel brakes her foot became wedged and she pressed the brake harder than necessary. The tail of the airplane came up, dropping the nose to the ground. The airplane hesitated with its tail in the air for a moment, and then fell over on its back.
The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical anomalies with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the vertical stabilizer, rudder, and the fuselage.
Probable cause
The student pilot's use of excessive brakes during taxi, which resulted in a loss of aircraft control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14CA266
- Event ID
- 20140623X33128
- Case number
- WPR14CA266
- 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: 392c971327341c5c1b3f08a0af525ae98470df923a44807c7b074dea0e91aacb; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:26:05.543Z.