WPR24LA075 · Harmon ROCKET II
Harmon ROCKET II · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA075
- 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
Harmon ROCKET II
- Aircraft type
- Harmon ROCKET
- 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
- N630L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 18 years (built 2006)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 › 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 day before the accident the airplane underwent maintenance on the brake system. The mechanic stated that after completing the maintenance, he advised the pilot to use caution during the first few brake applications to allow the system to wear in and recommended that the pilot perform at least three full stop landings.
On the day of the accident, the mechanic reported that he and the pilot ate lunch together, after which he observed the pilot perform several brake checks before departing. A witness reported observing the tailwheel-equipped airplane on the landing roll. The airplane was to the right of the centerline and continued to veer right while the ground speed slowed. The airplane then pitched forward, and the propeller contacted the runway surface. The airplane continued to slide forward and exited the right side of the runway before it nosed over and came to rest inverted with the pilot's head against the pavement.
Following the impact, first responders found the pilot in cardiac arrest after a prolonged extrication. He was resuscitated and was admitted to a hospital with serious injuries, including neurological injury that made him unable to communicate any history of the event. No significant pre-impact medical event was specifically identified during his hospitalization.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of control on the landing roll, which led to the airplane coming to rest inverted.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA075
- Event ID
- 20240117193673
- Case number
- WPR24LA075
- 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: 1f4f97c9f90519228bd49818d89a3971f52b7d8044aff0fffc45548b8bb74a43; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:26:36.194Z.