ERA21LA114 · Aviat A1 B
Aviat A1 B · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Lake Norman Airpark (14A) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA114
- 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
Aviat A1 B
- Aircraft type
- Aviat A1
- 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
- N480F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Norman Airpark (14A), Mooresville, NCTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2007)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was performing a repositioning flight following the completion of an annual inspection. After departing from a runway in his amphibious airplane, he observed a large, open area on a nearby lake and decided to perform a touch-and-go landing. Upon touchdown, the airplane flipped over and came to rest inverted, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage and wings. Due to his injuries, the pilot had no recollection of the accident. An inspector with the Federal Aviation Administration reported that, during wreckage recovery from the lake, all four landing gear wheels were in the extended positions, and the landing gear handle was in the “Down Land” position. He also noted that the pilot tube was covered in black electrical tape, blocking airflow through the tube. A pitot/static discrepancy was found during the annual inspection and the repair was deferred. The airplane was equipped with a backup landing gear position advisory system that would provide an audible message confirming the position of the gear prior to landing; however, the audible component would not work properly if the pilot tube was obstructed.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to retract the landing gear on the amphibious airplane prior to a water landing, resulting in a nose over and structural damage to the airframe. The mechanic’s failure to remove electrical tape from the pitot tube, the pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection, and the pilot’s failure to visually confirm the landing gear position prior to touchdown were all factors in the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA114
- Event ID
- 20210126102560
- Case number
- ERA21LA114
- 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: 3b0eac9a4fffe4e9d9303862ddd2e007959460da0558894ba92f58d81636db94; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:34:46.015Z.