ERA26LA099 · Frankewich Walter S-21 OUTBOUND
Frankewich Walter S-21 OUTBOUND · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX) to Mcgraw's Backyard Airport (5TN4)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA099
- 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
Frankewich Walter S-21 OUTBOUND
- Aircraft type
- Frankewich Walter S-21
- 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
- N88WL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX), Knoxville, TNTo Mcgraw's Backyard Airport (5TN4), Greenback, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2025)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was attempting a normal landing in an 8-knot right crosswind that was gusting to 14 knots. During the landing the airplane departed the left side of the runway and came to rest near a berm. The impact resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to compensate for gusty crosswind conditions during the landing roll, which resulted in a loss of control and subsequent runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA099
- Event ID
- 20260128202356
- Case number
- ERA26LA099
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 99321e18825dd2f5caa2f57b1c12f9629d968f18e714ce217f4a7c98f8956203; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:42:11.054Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. The state abbreviation is duplicated in the label; DKX is Knoxville Downtown Island Airport, Knoxville, TN.