ATL01LA091 · Mitchell Aircraft Corp T-10
Mitchell Aircraft Corp T-10 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Whifferdill Airport (TN77) to Ashland City, TN
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL01LA091
- 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
- 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
Mitchell Aircraft Corp T-10
- Aircraft type
- Mitchell T-10
- 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
- N3221X
- Operator
- Rayburn L. Williams · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whifferdill Airport (TN77), Ashland City, TNTo Ashland City, TN
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft control › Not possible
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff from the private grass strip, the CFI reported an " extreme vibration" in the airplane. He retarded the throttle and the vibration diminished. When the CFI banked the airplane to return to the private grass strip, the left wing dropped excessively. As engine power was increased to maintain a climb, the airplane made an uncommaded roll and began descending. The airplane collided with trees during the uncontrolled descent and impacted the ground. The post-impact examination of the airplane showed that the left rudder cable had binded in the in the wing and the left rudder would ont travel about half the normal distance. The rudder assemblies are returned to the neutral position by spring action; the rudder assembly is designed to move in only one direction.
Probable cause
The restricted movement of the rudder cable, resulting in a loss of control and collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL01LA091
- Event ID
- 20010731X01562
- Case number
- ATL01LA091
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-07-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 328d22c7dae103ff05559e867c3d1ccaa13c5005889c4580cc6d262dcdc68fe0; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:57:46.552Z.