CEN10CA022 · Gottelt Herbert R KITFOX IV/
Gottelt Herbert R KITFOX IV/ · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during landing
From Iron County Airport (50D) to Iron County Airport (50D)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10CA022
- 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
Gottelt Herbert R KITFOX IV/
- Aircraft type
- Gottelt Herbert KITFOX
- 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
- N94HG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Iron County Airport (50D), Crystal Falls, MITo Iron County Airport (50D), Crystal Falls, MI
- 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
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that immediately after liftoff he was unable to move the control stick to the left of the center (neutral) position, although he was able to move the control stick to the right, forward, and aft without restriction. The pilot returned for landing; however, “at about 30 [feet] altitude the aircraft began to stall.” The airplane subsequently landed hard, separating the main landing gear. Both wings and the fuselage structure were substantially damaged during the event. The pilot stated that the accident occurred during the third flight of the day. A postaccident inspection was unable to confirm a restriction at the control stick. Continuity between the cockpit controls and the flight control surfaces was confirmed.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to maintain control due to an undetermined problem affecting lateral control of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10CA022
- Event ID
- 20091019X51539
- Case number
- CEN10CA022
- 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: f1d9750f2ee748d68b277cb1bfcb45c87e5433cdb36cdcd688aaa80cf83ee8b0; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:25:22.452Z.