ERA14CA379 · Aviat Pitts S2B
Denair Aviat Pitts S2B · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Canandaigua Airport (D38) to Lakeville Airport (NY15)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14CA379
- 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
Aviat Pitts S2B
- Aircraft type
- Aviat PITTS S2B
- 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
- N893DC
- Operator
- Denair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Canandaigua Airport (D38), Canandaigua, NYTo Lakeville Airport (NY15), Lakeville, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 24 years (built 1990)
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the aerobatic, tailwheel-equipped biplane planned to attend a fly-in event at the destination airport. As he overflew the 2,500-foot-long by 60-foot-wide private turf runway, he noted that numerous airplanes were parked along its left side, and elected to favor the right side of the runway during the landing. During the landing roll the pilot felt a "tickle" in the control stick, and the airplane veered right into the tall grass and berm located along the runway's right edge. The airplane subsequently rolled left and right, striking both wingtips on the ground in the process, resulting in substantial damage. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to favor the right side of the relatively narrow turf runway while landing, resulting in inadvertent contact with tall grass and a berm.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14CA379
- Event ID
- 20140812X72024
- Case number
- ERA14CA379
- 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: 297c704df5c84dceb5ff60a59472d8e476ff2aad9b1f4373610db4fb2e973ff2; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:37:56.335Z.