CEN16LA271 · Gerald Nelson NELSON WOODY
Gerald Nelson NELSON WOODY · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Hope Municipal Airport (M18) to Hope Municipal Airport (M18)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA271
- 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
Gerald Nelson NELSON WOODY
- Aircraft type
- Gerald Nelson NELSON WOODY
- 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
- N525AG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hope Municipal Airport (M18), Hope, ARTo Hope Municipal Airport (M18), Hope, AR
- 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 · 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting touch-and-go landings in the homebuilt, tailwheel-equipped, experimental airplane. After a normal touchdown, the airplane veered to the left off the asphalt runway surface and ground looped as it departed the runway, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and left wing. Postaccident examination revealed that the left main landing gear retaining mechanism was broken, but it was not clear if the damage occurred before or after the loss of control. The pilot, who was the builder of the airplane and had about 500 hours of flight time in the airplane, reported that he believed that the retaining mechanism could have broken upon landing and resulted in the ground loop. The winds were light and variable at the time of the accident. Because the damage to the landing gear retention mechanism could have occurred before or after the loss of control, the reason for the loss of control could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of control upon landing for reasons that could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA271
- Event ID
- 20160719X34936
- Case number
- CEN16LA271
- 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: 1103762fcd41cb43ad781acba26408c55adceaf1e0f5c8a0ed3dc6e861f462a5; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:40:20.397Z.