CEN21LA085 · Luscombe 8 A
Luscombe 8 A · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing on approach
From Wolfe Air Park (3T2) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA085
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Luscombe 8 A
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N2238K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wolfe Air Park (3T2), Manvel, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 73 years (built 1947)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness reported that he saw the airplane takeoff from the airpark and fly a left traffic pattern. The airplane disappeared behind a tree line after lining up on a pipeline easement northeast of the airport. The witness then reported a bright flash from a power line, and he responded to the accident scene. He observed the airplane resting inverted in the field. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings and the forward fuselage. A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector responded to the accident site. The inspector reported that the airplane struck a set of power lines and crashed in a pipeline field about seven-tenths of a mile from the airpark. The owner of the property adjacent to the field told the inspector that he witnessed the airplane hit the power lines and that the airplane appeared to be attempting to land in the field.
The witness reported that since the accident he has spoken with the pilot on multiple occasions and the pilot has no memory of the crash or the events leading to the accident. However, in his statement to the FAA inspector, the witness reported the pilot telling him several times that he was on final approach to the runway when he hit the power lines.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from power lines during his attempted landing and his loss of situational awareness that led to him to misidentify a pipeline field for the landing airpark.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA085
- Event ID
- 20201211102403
- Case number
- CEN21LA085
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. 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: cbe82ff4799e35c6388b06499caa32e0cf3807dee22ac978383439a4a0bc7201; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:29:02.774Z.