CEN25LA299 · Piper J5A
Piper J5A · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Grenada Municipal Airport (GNF) to Grenada Municipal Airport (GNF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA299
- 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
Piper J5A
- Aircraft type
- Piper J5
- 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
- N35025
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grenada Municipal Airport (GNF), Grenada, MSTo Grenada Municipal Airport (GNF), Grenada, MS
- Aircraft age
- About 84 years (built 1941)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student were conducting full-stop landings in the tailwheel-equipped airplane. The flight instructor reported that the wind was calm throughout the local flight in the traffic pattern. During the final landing, upon touchdown the airplane swerved about 60° left of the runway heading. The flight instructor immediately took control of the airplane, but it swerved 90° to the right and departed off the right side of the runway. At that time, the flight instructor believed that the airplane had sufficient airspeed of 35-40 mph and an open grass area ahead to safely takeoff. However, the airplane entered an area of waist-high grass about 60 yards before a chain link fence that resulted in increased drag on the airplane. The flight instructor reduced engine power to idle shortly before the airplane struck the fence and came to a stop upright in a soybean field past the fence. The airplane’s wing struts and an engine mount tube were substantially damaged during collision with the fence. The flight instructor did not report any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s inadequate supervision of the flight and improper decision to continue with a takeoff after the airplane swerved off the runway. Contributing to the accident was the student pilot’s failure to maintain directional control of the tailwheel-equipped airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA299
- Event ID
- 20250731200676
- Case number
- CEN25LA299
- 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: c44f31c93ed1bceab4a12d281f9ec48f206ee97930114bf6b93fdb7441b90b53; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:09:38.775Z.