DEN03LA010 · Hildebrandt Rutan/Defiant
Hildebrandt Rutan/Defiant · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From FTG · Watkins, CO to FTG
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA010
- 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
Hildebrandt Rutan/Defiant
- Aircraft type
- Hildebrandt RUTAN DEFIANT
- 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
- N219DF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FTG · Watkins, COTo FTG
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Checklist, not used
- Pilot in command › Gear extension, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After taking off on runway 26 and turning onto the crosswind leg, the pilot noticed the rear engine oil pressure was dropping. After turning onto the downwind leg, the pilot reduced power on the rear engine to idle. When he was on final approach and felt assured of landing on the runway, he shut down the rear engine. When he retarded the throttle on the front engine, he noticed power was not decreasing. He secured the front engine by turning off the ignition and glided to a landing but he forgot to lower the nose landing gear. The airplane touched down, the nose struck the runway, and the airplane skidded to a halt on the runway. The airplane's nose section, including the "Rhino" rudder, was crushed and several fuselage bulkheads were buckled. The front engine throttle cable was found broken, and there was a broken oil pressure sensor line in the rear engine.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to use the checklist, resulting in his forgetting to lower the nose landing gear. Contributing factors included the pilot's attention being diverted by the loss of oil pressure on the rear engine due to a broken oil pressure sensor line, and a broken throttle cable on the front engine, requiring an airborne shutdown using the ignition switches.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA010
- Event ID
- 20021028X05391
- Case number
- DEN03LA010
- 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, coordinates. 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: 349027a2ad0fc5f3c588e800bd6cc3b9bf771181697dbe2bfc5ff16a500b2860; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:02:47.758Z.