ERA26LA096 · American General Acft Corp AG5B
Hudson River Wings American General Acft Corp AG5B · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Lincoln Park Airport (N07) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA096
- 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
American General Acft Corp AG5B
- Aircraft type
- American General AG5
- 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
- N59WM
- Operator
- Hudson River Wings
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lincoln Park Airport (N07), Lincoln Park, NJTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1991)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
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 reported being on the downwind leg of the airport traffic pattern when a 16 to 24-knot tailwind pushed the airplane further from the runway than he had planned. While on final approach, the airplane was low with a headwind. Following a momentary wind shift, the airplane lost more altitude and it struck the tops of trees resulting in substantial damage to the left wing. Despite the impact, the pilot was able to clear the trees and land safely on the runway. The pilot also reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain an appropriate glide path during the landing approach in gusting wind conditions, resulting in an impact with trees prior to the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA096
- Event ID
- 20260120202323
- Case number
- ERA26LA096
- 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: aef0132510fcb7fff3a59ef42ab721169236d9b970d64b881005de4bfd8665f9; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:41:04.288Z.