CEN15LA417 · Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA 5 UNDESIGNAT
Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA 5 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From M33 · Gallatin, TN to Spring Lake Airport (IN43)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA417
- 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
Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA 5 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American AA-5
- 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
- N67296
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From M33 · Gallatin, TNTo Spring Lake Airport (IN43), Pekin, IN
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1975)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Operating environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that he inquired about the runway condition at the intended destination private-use airport before the accident flight. He was informed that the runway was 40 ft wide by 2,000 ft long. Upon arrival, the pilot overflew the runway at 1,500 ft above ground level and noted that the runway appeared to have been "mowed." The pilot subsequently established the airplane on a long final. As he was landing, he observed corn extending from an adjacent field into the runway area. He chose to continue the landing rather than attempt a go-around. During the landing, the left wing struck the protruding corn crop, and the left main wheel dropped off the grass runway and pulled the airplane into the corn.
The pilot did not report any preimpact failures or malfunctions with the airplane. A postaccident examination of the runway environment revealed that the runway width had been reduced from about 40 to 32 ft in the area of the impinging corn crop, which was located about 375 ft from the approach end of the runway. The airplane's wingspan was 31 ft 5 inches.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of directional control during the landing roll due to contact with a corn crop that extended into the runway area. Contributing to the accident were the lack of accurate available information to the pilot regarding the runway condition, the pilot's failure to observe the intervening corn crop during the prelanding aerial fly-over, and his decision to land on a runway with a limited safety margin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA417
- Event ID
- 20150922X14845
- Case number
- CEN15LA417
- 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: b8fabc066c22d26b04db6efa1cd07c9accd63b431e2929ace451663ebf7f3e87; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:47:51.062Z.