SEA00LA065 · Aero Design Eleven 12
Aero Design Eleven 12 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Paradise Air Ranch Airport (WA62) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA065
- 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
Aero Design Eleven 12
- Aircraft type
- Aero Design Eleven 12
- 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
- N80XP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Paradise Air Ranch Airport (WA62), SPANGLE, WATo 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
- Landing gear, tailwheel assembly › Cracked
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While landing on runway 21R, and decelerating through about 25 miles per hour, the aircraft began to 'hunt.' In an effort to maintain directional control the pilot applied braking, however the aircraft ground-looped, coming to rest on the east side of the runway. When the pilot exited the aircraft he noted that the tail wheel assembly had separated from the airframe. Post-crash examination revealed that the tail wheel stinger sleeve, into which the stinger/tail wheel assembly bolts, had separated from the airframe at both the base of the rudder post and the lateral cross tube. Examination of the fracture surfaces of the sleeve where it attached to the lateral cross tube revealed discoloration of a portion of the tube end. The pilot/owner reported that only the top and bottom of the fish mouth joint had been welded to the tail wheel stinger tube where it attached to the lateral cross tube, and that 'failure at this joint allowed the tailwheel to break free of the airframe.'
Probable cause
Cracking of the weld between the tailwheel stinger housing and longitudinal cross tube, resulting in separation of the tube/tail wheel assembly from the airframe.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA065
- Event ID
- 20001212X20917
- Case number
- SEA00LA065
- 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: 6023c39b3b55ae08e1b2cb95baee23e1fcd9b5bab643a1ee91187b2e82ddf7a3; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:59:18.135Z.