NYC08LA273 · Ouzts Rodney Rutan-LongEZ
Ouzts Rodney Rutan-LongEZ · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU) to Barrow County Airport (WDR)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08LA273
- 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
Ouzts Rodney Rutan-LongEZ
- Aircraft type
- Ouzts Rodney RUTAN-LONGEZ
- 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
- N622EZ
- Operator
- David Rowe
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU), Lawrenceville, GATo Barrow County Airport (WDR), Winder, GA
- 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
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot purchased the airplane about 2 years prior to the accident; however, the accident flight was the first time he had flown it. On the day of the accident, the pilot performed about 2 hours of taxi testing and noted no problems with the brakes during taxi or before takeoff. He then performed a flight to a nearby airport and after landing when he applied both brakes, the left rudder/brake pedal at first functioned normally, then "sank to a stop." The aircraft veered to the right, off the edge of the runway, where it struck a runway sign before coming to rest about midfield. About 8 weeks prior to the accident, brake fluid was added to both master cylinders and the pilot performed taxi testing. During the testing, he experienced "softening of the brakes" or less resistance than normal. The pilot subsequently examined the brake system and noticed an area of brake fluid that had "lost color" and had faded from red to pink. Testing of the brake system after the accident revealed the left brake never engaged and the right brake functioned normally. An examination of the brake fluid revealed that the fluid in the line for the left brake was several shades lighter than the fluid in the line for the right brake. Examination of maintenance records revealed the airplane had accumulated 7 hours of total time.
Probable cause
The failure of the left brake due to contamination of the brake fluid.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08LA273
- Event ID
- 20080913X01448
- Case number
- NYC08LA273
- 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: 705f712c69e25ef344ec8a61ec58cb0f002a798da4f9d52f99354920b367341a; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:12:27.546Z.