CHI99LA241 · Taylorcraft BC12-D
Taylorcraft BC12-D · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Aitutaki Airport (AIT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA241
- 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
Taylorcraft BC12-D
- Aircraft type
- Taylorcraft BC12
- 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
- N96884
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aitutaki Airport (AIT)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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The wheel separated from the aircraft. The pilot said that in the roll out, the aircraft decelerated to 10-15 mph and the aircraft veered to the left. The pilot applied the brakes and the aircraft moved to the left of the runway. The aircraft began to skip and tipped to the right. The airplane came to rest off the left side of the runway. The right wing dragged on the runway. The landing gear gouged the asphalt. The prop struck the dirt alongside the runway. The wheel was found lying on the runway. The right spring on the tail wheel was found detached. The accident airplane's annual inspection was completed on May 25, 1999 and accumulated nine hours of flight time since the annual. The axle was sent to the National Transportation Safety Board's Materials Laboratory for examination. An excerpt from the laboratory's report states, 'The circumferential portion of the fracture surface was located on the inboard side of the circular plate at the top of the axle and had a dark brown and rubbed appearance, indicative of a crack that has been in existence for an extended time. This portion of the fracture was directly adjacent to the circular plate, through either the weld of heat affected zone adjacent to the weld between the upper struts and the circular plate. The circumferential portion of the fracture contained what appeared to be a wide but shallow crack arrest position, suggestive of crack initiation from a wide area approximately in the center of this portion of the fracture.' The pilot's safety recommendation states, 'The crack in the axle was tucked within the brake cylinder. The only way to inspect it would be removal of the wheel & brake assembly.'
Probable cause
the right spring in the tailwheel assembly's separation. Factors were the fatigue in the landing gear, the maintenance personnel not identifying the fatigue during the annual inspection, and the right main gear's separation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA241
- Event ID
- 20001212X19200
- Case number
- CHI99LA241
- 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: 9715b02cf6ad3663a33a162517ef082016e0529c39e93519f92ff4bc79b1c947; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:32:16.254Z.