ERA21LA077 · Embraer EMB-500
Executive Aviation Investors Embraer EMB-500 · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA077
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Embraer EMB-500
- Aircraft type
- Embraer EMB-500
- 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
- N661EP
- Operator
- Executive Aviation Investors
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF), Miami, FLTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 11 years (built 2009)
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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 › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight crew performed an instrument landing system approach in heavy rain. The published unfactored landing distance, which assumes ideal conditions for airplane speed, flightpath, and maximum braking immediately after touchdown, was about 330 ft shorter than the landing distance available. The factored landing distance, which 1) provides a safety margin and 2) allows for some variance from the ideal conditions, was about 1,360 ft longer than the landing distance available. During the approach, when the airplane was about 50 ft above the runway, the airspeed was about 4 knots higher than the target speed.
After touchdown, the pilot(s) began braking within 1-2 seconds; however, the brake pedals did not reach their maximum braking position until about 8 seconds after touchdown. The brake pedals remained in the maximum position for 3 seconds before the parking/emergency brake was applied. The parking brake activation, which is not protected by the anti-skid system, resulted in the locking of both main landing gear wheelsets, reducing braking performance significantly. As a consequence of the wheels locking, the anti-skid system was deactivated, as designed. The airplane departed the end of the runway at a speed of about 60 knots and sustained substantial damage.
Probable cause
The flight crew’s failure to apply maximum braking immediately upon touchdown, which resulted in a runway excursion. Contributing to the accident were 1) the slightly excessive approach airspeed and 2) the flight crew’s decision to land on a wet runway during heavy rain with little margin between the unfactored landing distance required and the landing distance available.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA077
- Event ID
- 20201217102425
- Case number
- ERA21LA077
- 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, 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: cd2a16f4eb9b7256d5772ec5c3d9ced0805a5d1d62d38549d4b0ee1f651b4ae5; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:29:59.532Z.