CHI04CA230 · Bowles Questair Venture
Sierra Bravo Partnership Bowles Questair Venture · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Liberal Mid-America Regional Airport (LBL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04CA230
- 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
Bowles Questair Venture
- Aircraft type
- Bowles QUESTAIR VENTURE
- 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
- N39SB
- Operator
- Sierra Bravo Partnership
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Liberal Mid-America Regional Airport (LBL), Liberal, KSTo not recorded
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The amateur-built experimental airplane sustained substantial damage when it nosed over after it veered off the left side of the runway. The pilot reported that he returned to land after 20 minutes of flight and that the airplane operated normally during the flight, including the touchdown. He reported that when the rudder lost its effectiveness during landing rollout, the airplane started to drift to the left. He applied right brake but without effect. He reported the airplane exited the left side of the runway and the nose gear "dug in" and the airplane nosed over about 2,000 feet from the touchdown point. An inspection of the airplane revealed that the left and right brakes operated. The nose gear fork was found broken with numerous fracture surfaces. All the fracture surfaces were consistent with overstress fractures. The nose wheel tire exhibited scuffing on the right half of the tire around its entire circumference. Grass was found embedded in between the tire and wheel rim on the right side of the tire. The left side of the tire had no scuff marks. The inspection of the nose wheel steering linkage indicated the nose wheel linkage was positioned in the full left direction. The inspection of the accident site revealed three tires skid marks approximately 1,600 feet in length extended from the airplane wreckage back to the touchdown zone on the runway. The tire marks veered to the left after touchdown. The airplane was equipped with an electric/hydraulic nose wheel steering system. The pilot reported that the nose wheel steering system was off during the landing. The airplane was equipped with the airplane's originally designed nose landing gear. The airplane was also equipped with the airplane's originally designed nose gear steering system's hydraulic actuator/shimmy dampner and steering linkage.
Probable cause
The loss of directional control during landing for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04CA230
- Event ID
- 20040910X01398
- Case number
- CHI04CA230
- 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 2004-08-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 93c9555c1a40ed567c905d0967bc3c47e32e5888dc55432cdff693b192f0789d; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:52:47.152Z.