CEN21LA333 · Boeing E75
Boeing E75 · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing on approach
From Mason City Municipal Airport (MCW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA333
- 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
Boeing E75
- Aircraft type
- Boeing E75
- 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
- N51CF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mason City Municipal Airport (MCW), Mason City, IATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 80 years (built 1941)
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the biplane reported that while on the final approach for the grass runway, he was maneuvering the airplane for landing to touchdown at the runway threshold markers. The airplane impacted an unmarked gray metal chain-link fence, about 8 ft tall, located about 250 ft from the runway threshold markers. The pilot reported the “fence blended in pretty well with the grass.” The airplane came to rest inverted on the runway and sustained substantial damage to both wings and the empennage. The pilot stated that the visibility at the time of the accident was “good,” and the lighting was “a little unusual from all the fires out west and I never saw the fence.” The pilot reported there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe and the engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from the fence while on final approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA333
- Event ID
- 20210723103529
- Case number
- CEN21LA333
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2021-07-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: dd2c3fa6e7cb920f4fd36ff47356bc09defd70b9c4002fe8074787b7274e3f15; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:19:02.684Z.