CEN09LA238 · Evektor-Aerotechnik AS SPORTSTAR PLUS
Evektor-Aerotechnik AS SPORTSTAR PLUS · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) on approach
From Airlake Airport (LVN) to Airlake Airport (LVN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA238
- 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
Evektor-Aerotechnik AS SPORTSTAR PLUS
- Aircraft type
- Evektor SPORTSTAR
- 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
- N906LA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Airlake Airport (LVN), Lakeville, MNTo Airlake Airport (LVN), Lakeville, MN
- 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 go-around
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A certified flight instructor (CFI) and his student were practicing maneuvers to simulate slow flight and aircraft control before landing. The intent of the maneuver was to fly the airplane down the length of the runway with the wheels about 2 feet above the runway surface. The student was to control airspeed with pitch, heading with rudder, drift with aileron control, and altitude with power. The CFI stated that the accident occurred on the second attempt of this maneuver and that the first attempt ended because the student was too fast and had too much engine power. The CFI stated that the second pass "started well" but the airplane began to sink around mid-field. He instructed the student to relinquish control and attempted a go-around. The airplane started pitching up and turning to the left, and subsequently impacted the ground. The CFI stated that he believed the student was pushing on the CFI's left rudder pedal during the mishap. He stated that on other occasions students have had their right foot slip off the pilot rudder pedal and on to the co-pilot's left rudder pedal. The student gave a similar account of the accident, but stated that after he relinquished control his feet were "tucked back under [him]." The manufacturer has designed a retrofit barrier that, when installed, would prevent a pilot from being able to depress the rudder pedal in the neighboring pilot position.
Probable cause
The instructor pilot’s failure to maintain directional control of the airplane, and the student pilot’s unintentional interference with the instructor’s rudder pedal during the go-around. Contributing to the accident was the cockpit design which allowed inadvertent rudder pedal activation from the opposite seat position.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA238
- Event ID
- 20090407X10341
- Case number
- CEN09LA238
- 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: e1ea34b880d74c73255c04aaebe51c14b81d21b1670ae8b03e91d36c82ca112e; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:54:40.051Z.