A light sport aircraft pilot reported an unstable approach resulted in a loss of control during landing; a runway excursion; and aircraft damage.

Date: 2025-07 · Aircraft: Pipestral Undifferentiated or Other Model · Phase: landing

Anomalies: ground-event-encounter-ground-strike-aircraft|ground-event-encounter-loss-of-aircraft-control|ground-excursion-runway|inflight-event-encounter-weather-turbulence|inflight-event-encounter-unstabilized-approach

Synopsis

A light sport aircraft pilot reported an unstable approach resulted in a loss of control during landing; a runway excursion; and aircraft damage.

Narrative

Woke up. Departed ZZZ for ZZZ1. Started flying event flights about XA:30 back to back until XF:00. Flew with Person A from approximately XF:45 until XG:45. Landing XX at ZZZ requires a steeper than normal descent rate to the 3100 x 60 foot runway due to the 100' tall trees surrounding the north one-third of the runway environment. An 8 knot crosswind; at the time of landing (approximately XG:45); sets up rotor turbulence from the tree line down to the runway surface. The final landing for the day resulted in a hard bounce followed by an attempted go around. It was a hot; humid; high density afternoon; and when power was applied the expected climb did not materialize. The aircraft settled back on the ground; this time angled to the side of the paved surface. The aircraft continued to travel from the pavement into unmowed waist high grass. The nose wheel dug in and the aircraft tipped up on to the spinner. The spinner was smashed. The composite propeller struck the ground and shattered. The nose gear leg was bent backward. The wingtip scraped the ground as evidenced by a scrape in the paint. The pilot in command scraped their forehead. The bloody abrasion triggered a trip to the emergency room and was treated. Both the pilot in command and the passenger were examined at the emergency room and given precautionary CT scans out of an abundance of caution with no finding of injury to either person other than the abrasion. The aircraft was pulled from the high grass and placed in the owners t-hangar. To this point in time; the pilot in command had been awake nine hours and been giving aircraft rides for six hours. The pilot had only consumed one donut the entire day.

Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.