LAX99LA074 · Abraham J G II/Erickson K ONE DESIGN
Abraham J G II/Erickson K ONE DESIGN · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA074
- 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
Abraham J G II/Erickson K ONE DESIGN
- Aircraft type
- Abraham J G Ii/erickson ONE DESIGN
- 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
- N857JA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Flt control syst, rudder control attach points › Separation
- Owner/builder › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot indicated the purpose of the flight was to practice outside snap rolls. When he pressed on the left rudder pedal, it went all the way to the floor with no resistance. He reported that the airplane was in straight and level flight when he reached down to verify that the cable was detached, hoping to be able to control the airplane when he realized that the cable was slack from the rear of the airplane. He then informed the tower of the emergency. The airplane entered a right bank from which the pilot could not recover and he jumped out of the airplane and parachuted to safety. The airplane wreckage was examined. The right rudder cable was found continuous from the cockpit pedal to the rudder control horn, with the horn end of the cable secured with a nicopress fitting. The left rudder cable was attached to the cockpit pedal but was detached from the rudder horn. The left cable to horn nicopress fitting was not on the cable's horn end and the left rudder cable end exhibited long and even splaying. When the cable was stretched out, it went all the way back to the rudder horn and was nearly identical in length to the right cable. A search of the accident site failed to locate the missing nicopress fitting.
Probable cause
The separation of the left rudder control cable from the rudder horn due to the improper installation of a nicopress fitting that secured the cable to the control horn.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA074
- Event ID
- 20001204X00079
- Case number
- LAX99LA074
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: d84438fb1f40ebfc77cc18727b4014b95075ee1c653809c6fa082bae6c74501c; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:59:38.179Z.