ERA24LA027 · Mustang II
Mustang II · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Merkel Field Sylacauga Municipal Airport (SCD) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA027
- 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
Mustang II
- Aircraft type
- Mustang II
- 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
- N71CB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merkel Field Sylacauga Municipal Airport (SCD), Sylacauga, ALTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1971)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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 › Task performance
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 was attempting to land on a constrained turf runway. A witness described that the airplane approached the runway too fast, landed long, and bounced several times. The pilot subsequently aborted the landing with limited runway remaining. The witness described that the airplane “staggered into the air” at a high pitch angle with the wings rocking left and right. The pilot described that the airplane’s nose “dropped” before it impacted the ground. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. Based on this information, it is likely that the pilot exceeded the airplane’s critical angle of attack during the aborted landing and subsequent initial climb, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and impact with terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane during initial climb after an aborted landing, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA027
- Event ID
- 20231031193331
- Case number
- ERA24LA027
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: f8d70f5c712b197e0cadb163baa83dee74620342ded5c929048f5313fb15f846; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:15:53.731Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. Misspelled city; SCD is Merkel Field, Sylacauga Municipal Airport, Sylacauga, AL.