ERA24LA358 · Cessna 305 A
Greater Boston Soaring Club Cessna 305 A · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Fitchburg Municipal Airport (FIT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA358
- 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
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Cessna 305 A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 305
- 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
- N5673B
- Operator
- Greater Boston Soaring Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fitchburg Municipal Airport (FIT), Fitchburg, MATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 73 years (built 1951)
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was receiving instruction from a flight instructor in the tailwheel-equipped airplane to become a glider tow pilot. The pilot landed the airplane on the grass next to the paved runway, an area that included a paved taxiway that crossed over it. Upon reaching the taxiway the airplane bounced and swerved to the right. The pilot corrected with rudder application and braking, but the airplane continued its right turn and ground looped. During the ground loop the left main landing gear collapsed and the left wing impacted the ground, substantially damaging it. The flight instructor reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The flight instructor also reported that he could have been faster in taking control of the airplane after it initially began to turn, but had relaxed because they were in the roll out phase of the landing, and because the pilot had previously landed the airplane without issue.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control of the airplane during the landing roll, which resulted in a ground loop and subsequent landing gear collapse. Contributing was the flight instructor’s delayed remedial action.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA358
- Event ID
- 20240827195010
- Case number
- ERA24LA358
- 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: 8d4c39d24abddf4eacec08d86cf0425c0132f062549beb85de970707d6552fd9; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:12:35.970Z.