CEN22LA410 · Waco Classic Aircraft Corp 2T-1A-2
Waco Classic Aircraft Corp 2T-1A-2 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Battle Creek Executive Airport at Kellogg Field (BTL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA410
- 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
Waco Classic Aircraft Corp 2T-1A-2
- Aircraft type
- Waco Classic 2
- 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
- N21GL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Battle Creek Executive Airport at Kellogg Field (BTL), Battle Creek, MITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2013)
- 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
- 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 on ground
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor, who was seated in the front seat, and pilot receiving instruction practiced three landings on the hard surface runway in the tailwheel-equipped airplane. The flight instructor reported that he then asked the pilot to conduct a 3-point landing on the grass adjacent to the runway. The instructor reported that the pilot got high and slow on short final and that he told the pilot to lower the nose and add power. He stated, “[pilot] was slow to respond [and] pulled the nose up (stick fully aft) for the landing.” The instructor stated he was too late to add power, and the airplane stalled about 5 to 8 ft above the grass. The main landing gear collapsed, and the airplane nosed over. The instructor reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot receiving instruction reported that while over the grass parallel to the runway threshold, he began to flare the airplane. The instructor stated the flare was initiated too high but to continue the landing. The airplane leveled out, and the instructor stated to “keep pulling.” The pilot reported the instructor began to manipulate the controls with the pilot, and the instructor pulled back on the control stick. The airplane entered an extreme nose-high attitude, stalled, and impacted the terrain. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the vertical stabilizer and rudder.
Probable cause
The pilot receiving instruction’s improper flare during landing and the flight instructor’s inadequate remedial action, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle-of-attach and experiencing an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA410
- Event ID
- 20220907105881
- Case number
- CEN22LA410
- 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: a142a7710dfe83a3042ec4aca12dc299edae9b6f4db8ac8667e0121552d24f94; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:55:58.249Z.