ERA09LA193 · Burkholder Jimmy C Zodiac 601HD
Burkholder Jimmy C Zodiac 601HD · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) during an emergency descent
From Suwannee County Airport (24J) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA193
- 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
- 2 · 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
Burkholder Jimmy C Zodiac 601HD
- Aircraft type
- Burkholder Jimmy ZODIAC 601
- 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
- N601DE
- Operator
- Burkholder Jimmy C
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Suwannee County Airport (24J), Live Oak, FLTo 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
- Emergency descent
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Two witnesses observed the experimental airplane flying overhead and noticed smoke coming from its front and underside. One of the witnesses reported that one wing was lower than the other and that the airplane was "loud." No radar data was available to determine the airplane’s flight path; examination of the airplane revealed that it impacted a tree with one wing, then impacted the ground at the base of the tree with the top half of the tree embedded in the fuselage. There was no evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomaly; however, the airplane was completely consumed by a postcrash fire. Examination of the pilot’s logbook revealed a total of 249 hours of flight experience. In the previous 9 years he logged 18 hours, including a 5-year period of time with no flight time logged. The pilot was also the builder and repairman for the airplane. His most recent entry in the airframe logbook was for a routine conditional inspection 5 months prior to the accident, at an aircraft total time of 249 hours. The origin of the smoke could not be determined; however, it could have affected the pilot's ability to control the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control of the airplane for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA193
- Event ID
- 20090310X44201
- Case number
- ERA09LA193
- 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: 7caf4ec5aa61bd34c8ded38fdcbd30411cee13df3c42136cb228ec220c534ada; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:59:29.553Z.