SEA01LA151 · Pitts Special SC-1
Pitts Special SC-1 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Rigby Airport (U56) to Jerome County Airport (JER)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA151
- 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
Pitts Special SC-1
- Aircraft type
- Pitts Special SC-1
- 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
- N8351
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rigby Airport (U56), Rigby, IDTo Jerome County Airport (JER), Jerome, ID
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who had just bought the airplane, reported that after a "perfect" three-point landing, the aircraft began a slow drift to the right. He reported that he applied left rudder pedal to counteract the right drift, with no response. He stated that he then added more left rudder, still with no response. The pilot reported that he then applied left brake, but did not get any braking action. The aircraft subsequently departed the runway at a speed estimated by the pilot at about 35 MPH. The left main landing gear then hit a hole and the aircraft came to rest, nose down, about 25 feet off the right side of the runway near the runway exit point. A post-accident inspection disclosed that the left rudder could deflect about 50 to 55 degrees, with maximum right rudder deflection measured at 30 degrees. Full design rudder travel is 30 degrees in either direction. With the rudder at 50 to 55 degrees, the rudder pedal rests against the firewall, preventing the left brake from being applied. The pilot reported that the aircraft received an annual inspection by the previous owner (a certificated airframe and powerplant mechanic) on the date of sale, in July 2001. Follow-up interviews with the previous owner/mechanic and the accident pilot disclosed that the previous owner/mechanic was aware of an anomaly which prevented braking from being applied with rudder pedal deflected at the time he performed the annual inspection, and that he informed the pilot of this anomaly on the day the sale took place.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing. Factors included: an incorrectly manufactured or adjusted rudder travel setting, resulting in restricted movement of the left brake; the mechanic's failure to adjust the rudder travel to the correct tolerance; and the pilot's operation of the aircraft with a known equipment deficiency.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA151
- Event ID
- 20010824X01768
- Case number
- SEA01LA151
- 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: b50d81f5f8c25b7ba9b65c4ec7d871d1af058e0adb8a5b6355c9853fd735c6c3; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:39:18.369Z.