WPR26LA014 · Maye James A JUST AIRCRAFT ESCAPA
Maye James A JUST AIRCRAFT ESCAPA · Accident: hard landing
From Flanigan, NV to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26LA014
- 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
Maye James A JUST AIRCRAFT ESCAPA
- Aircraft type
- Maye James JUST AIRCRAFT ESCAPA
- 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
- N80JM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flanigan, NVTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 2009)
- 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
- Hard 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
- 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 stated that he departed with another airplane to evaluate potential backcountry landing sites. The pilot of the other airplane landed first on a grass hill and recommended to the accident pilot over the radio that he approach the landing area from another angle as the terrain was rough. The accident pilot visually assessed the terrain and selected what appeared to be a smoother and more suitable landing area. However, the terrain was upsloping and steeper than it appeared from the air. During touchdown, the airplane landed hard, the main landing gear collapsed and the airplane sustained substantial damage to the firewall. The pilot reported that there were no pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26LA014
- Event ID
- 20251009201829
- Case number
- WPR26LA014
- 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: 40f62a0d2c78e32b73de586be77dcd6679ddf2dcbc132f6a42573eddd2d14d2d; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:27:16.579Z.