FTW01LA034 · Evans Aircraft VARIEZE
Evans Aircraft VARIEZE · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Corpus Christi International Airport (CRP) to T43
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01LA034
- 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
Evans Aircraft VARIEZE
- Aircraft type
- Evans VARIEZE
- 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
- N64592
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Corpus Christi International Airport (CRP), Corpus Christi, TXTo T43
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Flight control, rudder › Binding(mechanical)
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, restricted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Night visual meteorological conditions prevailed when the airplane entered an uncommanded left roll while in the traffic pattern turning from upwind to crosswind. The left wing struck the ground and the airplane came to rest in brushy terrain, approximately 100 yards east of the runway. The FAA inspector examined the aircraft and observed that paint was missing from the rear edge of the rudder control arm, and manual movement of the rudder against the centering spring resulted in the cable eye hooking itself behind the rudder control arm. The airplane had accumulated 26 hours of flight time since the last condition inspection.
Probable cause
the loss of control during takeoff initial climb due to the binding rudder, which restricted the pilot's control of the aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01LA034
- Event ID
- 20010114X00298
- Case number
- FTW01LA034
- 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 2000-12-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bfea248f2ac3763e1b4215de8f9dba8423ebf52f9f78ff092cca3d2396d936da; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:02:06.809Z.