ERA18LA023 · Great Lakes 2T1A 2
Great Lakes 2T1A 2 · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Turners Falls Airport (0B5) to Orange Municipal Airport (ORE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA023
- 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
Great Lakes 2T1A 2
- Aircraft type
- Great Lakes 2
- 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
- N3512L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Turners Falls Airport (0B5), Montague, MATo Orange Municipal Airport (ORE), Orange, MA
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1978)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was initiating takeoff for the positioning flight with no winds and with the airplane's tail off the runway when the airplane suddenly veered left, which he could not correct. The airplane exited the left side of the runway and then slid down a sharp incline into a ditch and nosed over.
Postaccident examination of the runway revealed skid marks made by the right main landing gear (MLG) tire that continued off the runway, and by the tailwheel tire, which began 50 ft past the beginning of the right MLG tire marks and also continued off the runway. The left MLG tire only made light tire marks, which indicates that the airplane was light on the left MLG tire during the takeoff.
No flat spots were noted on either MLG tire, and examination of both brakes and the flight controls revealed no evidence of a preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. During an operational test, the left brake operated normally. The right brake could not be operationally tested due to damage to its components Given the evidence, it is likely that the pilot lost directional control during the attempted takeoff.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control during the attempted takeoff, which resulted in a runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA023
- Event ID
- 20171103X74838
- Case number
- ERA18LA023
- 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: 601ac1d9589add2feb4d2d8e00ae86ba9b25102401a0c5d04b66b0b9e0744a0b; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:58:58.874Z.