CEN15CA353 · Ratte James AVENTURA II
Ratte James AVENTURA II · Accident: hard landing
From Tyler, TX to Tyler, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15CA353
- 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
- 0
- 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
Ratte James AVENTURA II
- Aircraft type
- Ratte James AVENTURA
- 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
- N6356Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tyler, TXTo Tyler, TX
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Hard 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-seaplane rated private pilot stated that his intention was to get comfortable with the airplane. He performed several maneuvers in the air, then seven uneventful touch-and-go water landings with half flaps extended. On the final landing attempt, he fully extended the flaps and had difficulty controlling the airplane. The airplane bounced on the water twice and the pilot initiated a go-around. The airplane veered left and was headed toward houses and boat docks; he maneuvered to ditch the airplane into the water to avoid a collision. The airplane impacted the water and sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. The pilot egressed the airplane with minor injuries. The pilot's lack of experience in the airplane contributed to the loss of control during the go around.
Probable cause
The loss of airplane control during a go around, which resulted in impact with the water. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of seaplane rating and inexperience in the accident airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15CA353
- Event ID
- 20150812X54001
- Case number
- CEN15CA353
- 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: d795983ed87f72b2bc0e27519e66942fd81363019280a19ec51a55002f1155b4; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:39:41.429Z.