ERA21LA220 · Douglas K Thompson JUSTAIRCRAFT SUPERST
Douglas K Thompson JUSTAIRCRAFT SUPERST · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA220
- 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
Douglas K Thompson JUSTAIRCRAFT SUPERST
- Aircraft type
- Douglas K Thompson JUSTAIRCRAFT SUPERST
- 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
- N184DT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2014)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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 in flight
- 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 › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was flying a visual approach for landing when, at 200 ft above ground level (agl), he encountered a “microburst.” The right wing rose about 30° and the airplane turned to the left. He corrected with right aileron and rudder control inputs; however, the airplane continued to the left. When he finally was able to regain control the airplane, he was left of the runway at 50 ft agl. He elected to land in an open field adjacent to the runway. After touchdown, a tailwind increased his ground speed to about 50 kts and the right wing collided with a fence as he attempted to decelerate. The airplane’s right wing was substantially damaged. No evidence of a preexisting mechanical malfunction or failure was found during the postaccident examination of the wreckage, and no mechanical anomalies were reported by the pilot.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate compensation for the prevailing wind conditions, which resulted in a loss of directional control during the approach and landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA220
- Event ID
- 20210518103097
- Case number
- ERA21LA220
- 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: 7c0db9e71c02fe70f94fcb3d0908e7dbafe649121a6f1b3e35cbc1556bd08543; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:03:26.524Z.