NYC03LA175 · Stinson 108
Stinson 108 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From White Post Airport (3VA7) to White Post Airport (3VA7)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03LA175
- 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
Stinson 108
- Aircraft type
- Stinson 108
- 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
- N97168
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From White Post Airport (3VA7), White Post, VATo White Post Airport (3VA7)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/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
- Flt control syst, elevator control › Restricted
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, annual inspection, improper
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The owner/mechanic overhauled the engine and gave the airplane an annual inspection. He took off on the first flight after the maintenance and when the airplane was on final approach, as he added the last notch of flaps, heard a sound which he described as a "ping." When he retarded the throttle shortly there after, he was unable to arrest its descent, and the airplane dove to the ground and nosed over. An FAA inspector reported that when he exercised the up elevator movement was intermittently restricted by a radio rack. The radio rack was tight in place and there was no evidence that it had shifted or was loose. Further, the up elevator movement was half of that specified for the airplane, and the down elevator movement was 150 percent of that specified.
Probable cause
The pilot/ mechanic's improper annual inspection including his rigging of the elevator flight control, and his subsequent inadequate preflight inspection of the airplane prior to flight, when he failed to detect the improperly rigged elevator flight control, both of which resulted in restricted up elevator control during the flare.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03LA175
- Event ID
- 20030808X01291
- Case number
- NYC03LA175
- 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: 05a1131cd4b3a48810715e70757ac7ae5cfc1a4868b7c42f96f51eeccb13afc8; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:51:17.311Z.