WPR10LA306 · Luscombe 11A
Luscombe 11A · Accident: aircraft structural failure en route
From Visalia Municipal Airport (VIS) to Nut Tree Airport (VCB)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA306
- 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
Luscombe 11A
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 11
- 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
- N1606B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Visalia Municipal Airport (VIS), Visalia, CATo Nut Tree Airport (VCB), Vacaville, CA
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Aircraft structural 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 structures
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during cruise flight several minutes after departure he felt both the control yoke and airframe shake violently. The pilot looked out of his window toward the tail section and observed the elevator trim tab fluttering up and down with no corresponding movement to the trim wheel inside the cockpit. The pilot reduced engine power to slow the airplane and regain aircraft control. The airplane began to descend despite full aft elevator pressure. Realizing that he did not have elevator control, the pilot manually manipulated the throttle for pitch control and contacted air traffic control to report his situation. During the descent to a road, the left wing struck a heavy advertising sign and a fence post. After exiting the airplane, the pilot inspected the trim tab and stated that it had failed outboard of the trim cable control horn bracket attachment. He also reported that the upper bolt for the elevator control cable bellcrank to the elevator torque tube attachment bracket was missing. Further examination of the airframe revealed that bolts from the upper attachment and the aft attachment for the elevator control cable bellcrank to elevator torque tube attachment were missing. Damage to the airframe in the tail section included, on the right side torque tube, rub marks on the leading edge with corresponding damage to the adjacent airframe skin, and left side torque tube rub marks on the trailing edge with damage to the rudder skin behind it. What likely occurred was that the elevator attachment bolts on the elevator control cable bellcrank backed out, which then initiated flutter at the elevator, which transferred to the trim tab causing it to fail in overload. Maintenance records indicated that the applicable Airworthiness Directive for the inspection of the trim tab horn attachment was accomplished in December 1949. The airplane had flown 7 hours since its last annual inspection 6 months prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inability to maintain airplane control during cruise flight due to the failure of the elevator trim tab as a result of missing hardware for the elevator control cable bellcrank to elevator torque tube attachment bracket.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA306
- Event ID
- 20100624X23912
- Case number
- WPR10LA306
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-06-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 97c3d06a48f3a87c6d7faa65374de3d048e316e098371ad1fcd6657de077fbd3; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:29:28.736Z.