WPR21LA251 · Stinson 108-3
Stinson 108-3 · Accident: runway incursion (vehicle, aircraft or person) during landing
From Key Way Airport (19WA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA251
- 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
Stinson 108-3
- Aircraft type
- Stinson 108
- 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
- N6548M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Key Way Airport (19WA), Stevenson, WATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 73 years (built 1948)
- 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
- Runway incursion (vehicle, aircraft or person)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, he planned to fly one circuit in the traffic pattern, and then land from the south. The landing approach was uneventful, and having reached midfield, he began to initiate the flare. A van then crossed the runway directly in front of the airplane, and the pilot decided to perform a go-around. Although the airplane began to slowly climb, it was not climbing at a rate sufficient to clear the approaching rising terrain, and within a few seconds they reached the end of the runway. The pilot attempted to perform a forced landing into a clearing about 1,000 ft beyond the end of the runway, and shortly after impacting the ground, the airplane caught fire and was destroyed. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane or engine that would have precluded normal operation. He stated that standard procedures called for retracting the flaps once a positive rate of climb had been established, however he did not do so because the climb performance was not sufficient. The airport owner reported that, due to rising terrain to the north of the 2,300 ft-long private turf airstrip, landing approaches from the south were recommended. The airstrip was 100 ft wide and bound by trees immediately to the left and right.
Probable cause
A runway incursion, which resulted in a go-around, and subsequent forced landing when the airplane was not able to climb at a rate sufficient to clear approaching rising terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA251
- Event ID
- 20210628103362
- Case number
- WPR21LA251
- 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: 67d65b306e87c4f92636367789706a57e10e1b4393da4ba658eea8ed1422f5bf; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:13:43.138Z.