SEA02LA021 · King Kitfox IV
King Kitfox IV · Accident: nose over during landing
From Ruch, OR to Ashland Municipal Airport Sumner Parker Field (S03)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA02LA021
- 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
King Kitfox IV
- Aircraft type
- King KITFOX
- 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
- N38DK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ruch, ORTo Ashland Municipal Airport Sumner Parker Field (S03), ashland, OR
- 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
- Nose over
- 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 › Brakes(normal), excessive
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported in a written statement that during the landing roll and as the aircraft was slowing, he applied the brakes to make a turn onto the taxiway. The pilot stated that when he applied the brakes, they "grabbed" and the aircraft nosed over. After the accident, the pilot reported to a state trooper that he applied the brakes a little hard to make a turn off and flipped over. The pilot reported no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the aircraft at the time. The pilot also reported that this was the first flight in a tail wheel equipped aircraft in the previous five months.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive use of brakes. A factor was the pilot's lack of recent experience in type of aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA02LA021
- Event ID
- 20020103X00012
- Case number
- SEA02LA021
- 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: e7c9bf6e78d1b07c32f9f17fb702ee8ea65dd43ac9ecf785313ee33dc6c43f38; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:13:19.925Z.