MIA08LA187 · Piper J5A
Van Wagner Aerial Media Piper J5A · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure while maneuvering
From Fulton County Airport Brown Field (FTY) to Fulton County Airport Brown Field (FTY)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA08LA187
- 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
Piper J5A
- Aircraft type
- Piper J5
- 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
- N105F
- Operator
- Van Wagner Aerial Media
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fulton County Airport Brown Field (FTY), Atlanta, GATo Fulton County Airport Brown Field (FTY), Atlanta, 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a banner-pick up maneuver, the pilot “heard and felt a pop from the elevator cable.” The airplane leveled off with the flight control stick in the full-aft position, and the elevator was in the neutral position. The airplane continued in an uncontrollable slight descent into a rough field where the airplane impacted with the ground. Wreckage examination revealed the cable for the elevator's, pitch-up control, located at the lower end of the control stick through the attaching thimble, had slipped through the cable oval sleeve swage. Examination by the NTSB Material Laboratory of the swage revealed the incorrect grooves on the hand tool was used to crimp the swage. The operator was not utilizing a “go–no go” gauge to insure proper crimping of the oval sleeve swage. Several airplanes in the operator’s 27 airplane fleet had flight control cable fabricated and replaced by their maintenance personnel. The operator grounded its fleet and conducted an inspection of flight control cable assemblies. A total of 36 flight control cable swages and 41 flight control cables were required to be replaced.
Probable cause
The loss of pitch control due to slippage of the elevator control cable resulting from the maintenance personnel’s improper installation and inspection of the cable.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA08LA187
- Event ID
- 20080919X01506
- Case number
- MIA08LA187
- 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. 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: 1d565fb88e323b7dbafb8d0476946776aabf308c63b9c5eb7642e913c4755fa9; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:15:21.569Z.