CHI99LA261 · Hodre-Buull-Kolb MARK III
Hodre-Buull-Kolb MARK III · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA261
- 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
Hodre-Buull-Kolb MARK III
- Aircraft type
- Hodre Buull Kolb MARK
- 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
- N93JL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- 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, rudder control › Failure, total
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported the experimental amphibian airplane climbed to about 200 feet above the lake when it lost all rudder control. A witness said the airplane was '...tilting...' its wings and then impacted the water nose first. The pilot said that after the airplane lost its rudder control he tried to turn it away from a beach populated with swimmers and sunbathers. The on-scene investigation revealed the airplane impacted the water outside the swimming area. The investigation revealed that the airplane's right rudder control cable phenolic pulley had split in half. The pulley is located under a shroud below the right rudder pedal. Its shaft was corroded and the pulley would not rotate on it. The slackened rudder cable prevented the rudder from functioning.
Probable cause
The failure of the airplane's rudder control pulley due to corrosion and inadequate maintenance inspection of the airplane by the owner/pilot mechanic of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA261
- Event ID
- 20001212X19218
- Case number
- CHI99LA261
- 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: 4ff0a53f3823d9c151fc07910951c52494aaab43395cdb3801e1b2815f5618d0; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:56:14.654Z.