NYC97LA085 · Marsh-Turner BG-12A
Marsh-Turner BG-12A · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Marion Municipal Airport (MNN) to John Glenn Columbus International Airport (CMH)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA085
- 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
- 1 · 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
Marsh-Turner BG-12A
- Aircraft type
- Marsh Turner BG-12
- Category
- Glider
- 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
- N8711R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Marion Municipal Airport (MNN)To John Glenn Columbus International Airport (CMH), Columbus, OH
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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 control cable/rod › Disconnected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
With the owner at the flight controls, the experimental homebuilt glider was under tow to take it to another airport. Witnesses reported that about 1 minute after departure, the glider entered into a series of divergent pitch oscillations which terminated in a near vertical dive into a field. The tow rope separated during the oscillations. According to an FAA report, '...The rod end of the elevator/aileron control stick was found pulled out of push rod. The meal casing that the rod end fitted into was crushed. The rod end contained 1 fastener (rivet) core with signs of fretting and scoring, with the remaining attaching fastener core missing....' The last annual inspection was performed in August 1995. The glider was operated on an FAA special flight permit, which required either an inspection by an aircraft mechanic or a repair shop before the flight. No record of the inspection was found by the FAA inspectors.
Probable cause
Disconnection of the elevator control rod which resulted in the loss of elevator control. A factor was failure to complete the required maintenance inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA085
- Event ID
- 20001208X07996
- Case number
- NYC97LA085
- 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: 990dd4e2dc228e26111b140d7919b2573ca1fc5a01a8b7975ea37fa2f83e8d74; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:58:28.347Z.