WPR24LA158 · Engineering & Research ERCOUPE 415-C
Engineering & Research ERCOUPE 415-C · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA158
- 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
Engineering & Research ERCOUPE 415-C
- Aircraft type
- Engineering Research ERCOUPE 415
- 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
- N99577
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 78 years (built 1946)
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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 › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident flight was the non-certificated pilot's first flight in the airplane, which the pilot had recently purchased and taken possession of on the day of the accident. The airplane was on a steep approach as the pilot attempted to land and hit an approach light short of the runway threshold. The airplane then bounced and struck another set of lights before landing hard on the runway. Subsequently, the airplane came to rest on the runway and a postimpact fire ensued. A witness who arrived at the scene of the accident stated that the pilot told him that he had misjudged the landing. A witness reported that the pilot conducted a steep approach to land, consistent with an unstable approach. The airplane was not available for examination following the accident, and whether a mechanical anomaly contributed to the accident could not be determined. The investigation was unable to determine the extent of the non-certificated pilot’s previous flight experience or whether the pilot had received any formal or informal flight instruction.
Probable cause
The non-certificated pilot’s unstable approach to landing, which resulted in a collision with approach lighting, hard landing, and postimpact fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA158
- Event ID
- 20240522194306
- Case number
- WPR24LA158
- 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: 8ef88cb6aeb3dee6a2102bbb48ed2fc4ad245e6851dd41cd05f78fe00a5c2c4a; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:47:44.065Z.