DEN01LA017 · 2000 McCoy Genesis
2000 McCoy Genesis · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN01LA017
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
2000 McCoy Genesis
- Aircraft type
- 2000 Mccoy GENESIS
- 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
- N9931W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL), Fort Collis, COTo 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
- 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
- Fuselage, stringer › Failure, total
- Fuselage, stringer › Punctured
- Owner/builder › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While the pilot/builder was conducting the 28th test flight following construction of the homebuilt aircraft, witnesses observed the aircraft flying in a westerly direction about 1,500 feet above the surface. The witnesses said the wings appeared to fold up and the aircraft descended vertically and impacted the ground in a open field trailing a streamed parachute. Investigation revealed the aircraft had been equipped with an aircraft recovery parachute and it had been activated by the pilot/builder. During deployment, the parachute had gone through the propeller and sheared off all the propeller blades. It also revealed a structural failure in the airframe where the pilot had drilled multiple holes at the left horizontal stabilizer attach point. The failure allowed the horizontal and vertical stabilizer to be displaced over the top of the aircraft. The aircraft was of a pusher propeller design and research into the parachute system provided information that in pusher propeller aircraft installations, the engine must be secured prior to the deployment of the parachute to prevent the parachute from becoming entangled in the propeller. The parachute shroud lines and Kevlar retention strap were wrapped around the propeller shaft and hub preventing the parachute from opening.
Probable cause
Failure of an airframe stringer due to improper construction by the builder/pilot which rendered the aircraft uncontrollable. A factor was failure by the builder pilot to follow procedures and secure the engine prior to deploying the aircraft recovery parachute.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN01LA017
- Event ID
- 20010620X01224
- Case number
- DEN01LA017
- 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: 8c9142fc359390ad335995435ea4cd16580eb720ef3d228b553b5c785622aa73; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:46:35.227Z.