WPR22FA361 · Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA-5B
Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA-5B · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22FA361
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- 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
Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA-5B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American AA-5
- 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
- N74349
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1975)
- 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 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
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 departed to a nearby airport, where he completed three takeoffs and landings before returning to his home airport. Flight track data indicated that the airplane slowed to about 60 knots (kts) on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, much slower than its speed on the downwind leg during the previous two traffic patterns. Just before turning to the base leg, the airplane diverged away from the runway, then began a 180°, accelerating, descending turn. The airplane overshot the runway centerline but corrected before crossing the approach end of the runway. The airplane then continued past the runway, where it impacted a fence and terrain about 557 ft from the departure end of the runway. The pilot was fatally injured, and the airplane was destroyed by a postimpact fire. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed that the aileron carry-through cable had fractured due to between-strand wear and overstress of the remaining wires. The loss of the carry-through cable degraded the aileron control system by only commanding movement of one aileron or the other, depending on which direction the pilot was turning. It is possible that the cable separated on the downwind leg of the last traffic pattern, as this was the first indication of a deviation of normal traffic pattern flight. A review of maintenance records revealed the last annual inspection, occurred on October 1, 2021, and called for inspection of control cables, specifically at the pulleys.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control following a separation of the aileron carry-through cable.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22FA361
- Event ID
- 20220929106017
- Case number
- WPR22FA361
- 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: d2d2894a489f28bb97c5fd3b924ce5a0ab667b233fc69be87caadd84dd560daf; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:52:00.114Z.