FTW00LA230 · Aeronca 65-CA
Aeronca 65-CA · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Sunrise Beach Airport (2KL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA230
- 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
Aeronca 65-CA
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 65
- 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
- N33783
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sunrise Beach Airport (2KL), SUNRISE BEACH, TXTo 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 · 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Rudder, inadvertent activation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight, the pilot felt a bump and the airplane began a level turn to the left. He applied right rudder; however, the airplane continued to turn left. The pilot further reported that the airplane went under some wires prior to impacting trees. Flight control continuity was established to all flight controls; however, the tab where the left rudder cable attaches to the torque tube arm for the left rudder pedal was found damaged. The torque tube arm was located just inside of where the pilot's right foot would rest. The pilot stated that he "placed his right foot on the [left rudder] torque tube arm and not on the right rudder. This caused the start of the left yaw. I then pushed hard on the torque tube arm and this caused the [airplane] to flat spin to the left, spin recovery did not occur because I was holding the left rudder all the way to the ground."
Probable cause
the pilot's inadvertent activation of the left rudder control, which resulted in a loss of control while in cruise flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA230
- Event ID
- 20001212X21728
- Case number
- FTW00LA230
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-08-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 32147fd1339f3f89cd8c6b4f71765656ca43450aa4f2781806fd3ef4c87960cc; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:07:13.186Z.