CHI99LA099 · Calkins KITFOX 5
Calkins KITFOX 5 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Aurora Medical Center Heliport (WI06) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA099
- 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
Calkins KITFOX 5
- Aircraft type
- Calkins KITFOX 5
- 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
- N394GL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aurora Medical Center Heliport (WI06)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
- Approach
- 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, elevator trim/tab control › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the airplane was turning base to final the pilot, 'felt a bump and vibration in the control stick...' when he commanded a final nose-up trim adjustment. The pilot reported that the remainder of the approach to the runway was uneventful. The pilot stated that, 'When I went to flare for the landing I did not have any pitch control.' The pilot reported that the airplane landed very hard and bounced back into the air in a nose high orientation. The pilot reported that during the hard landing the seat broke from its mounts and fell onto the flaperon control tube, inhibiting flaperon actuation. The pilot stated that the airplane then 'Stalled', landed tail first on the runway, ground looped, and came to rest with the right wingtip and the tail touching the ground. Post accident examination of the aircraft showed that the trim actuator was fractured at its attachment point to the airframe.
Probable cause
the fracture of the trim actuator.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA099
- Event ID
- 20001205X00279
- Case number
- CHI99LA099
- 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: 110afe1faad46f14d107e206758d72b5cd5e587609652aeccd4dd1056bab8887; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:46:29.585Z.