CHI08FA196 · Czech Aircraft Works Sport Cruiser
Czech Aircraft Works Sport Cruiser · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Cushing Field Ltd Airport (0C8) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08FA196
- 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
- 1 · 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
Czech Aircraft Works Sport Cruiser
- Aircraft type
- Czech Aircraft Works SPORT CRUISER
- 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
- N602CF
- Operator
- Sport Pilot Chicago
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cushing Field Ltd Airport (0C8), Newark, ILTo 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- Defining eventThe 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 in flight
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The sport pilot departed in a Special – Light Sport Aircraft (S-LSA) from a grass airstrip and impacted the terrain. The accident site was located within the traffic pattern about where the turn from a left downwind to a left base leg would be made. There were no witnesses to the accident and there was no recorded radar track data of the accident flight. The damage to the airplane indicated that it impacted the terrain in about a 30-degree nose-down attitude in a left bank. The inspection of the airframe revealed no preexisting anomalies. The engine was put on an engine test stand and it operated through the full range of rpm settings. The stall speed at the maximum gross weight with wings level and the engine at idle is 39 mph.
The inspection of the pilot’s shoulder harness revealed that the single strap of the shoulder harness that attached the harness to the rear cabin bulkhead was separated from the shoulder harness yoke where it was stitched to the shoulder straps. The stitching had failed at the attach point. The accident airplane was classified as a LSA and as such, was not certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. LSA’s are described as “self certifying,” indicating that they are certified as airworthy by the manufacturer.
After a review of the pilot’s autopsy findings, it was determined that some of the pilot’s injuries would have been less severe if the shoulder harness had not failed. However, due to the severity of the crash, the resulting injuries were likely to still be fatal.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane in the landing pattern. Contributing to the severity of injuries was the failure of the pilot's shoulder harness.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08FA196
- Event ID
- 20080728X01120
- Case number
- CHI08FA196
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: bfbf519f143e1581636b6de83d62c9597d5ed99c32ad4b07ca905aff6308c9e3; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:17:51.550Z.