The solo student pilot reported that during the landing roll at the airport in Las Vegas, she was not ready to turn off the runway when the tower controller instructed her to exit the runway at Taxiway C.
She tried to follow the controller’s instruction and made a turn at the taxiway. The Evektor Sportstar’s left wing was substantially damaged when it hit a taxiway sign.
The pilot reported that there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable Cause: The student pilot’s inadequate decision to make a premature turn onto a taxiway which resulted in a collision with a taxiway sign.
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This August 2020 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.
While 2,000 feet should be enough for this aircraft to slow enough to exit the runway, as others have said, pilots need to say ‘unable’ when they cannot comply safely.
The English is in sentence fragments, but is fully understandable.
I hope that his student pilot had renters insurance [ sorry, I can’t use ‘learner’ ]
The repairs to the wing look to be expensive.
Sometimes these reports are informative and sometimes they are simply not written in English as we should know it. For example: “the pilot’s inadequate decision to make a premature turn, etc., etc.” Inadequate DOES NOT mean stupid, ill-considered, poor or unwise; inadequacy is a quantitative, not qualitative thing. And making a “premature” turn as opposed to the opposite is probably never a good way to exit a runway, anyhow. The dumbing-down continues. I’m old and grumpy but I just can’t stand bad writing.
Cfis and students need to know and use the word UNABLE in some circumstances.. Student pilot’s should identify to ATC that they’re a solo student..