CEN10LA401 · Klemme William H ZENITH CH 701
Klemme William H ZENITH CH 701 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Iowa Falls Municipal Airport (IFA) to Iowa Falls Municipal Airport (IFA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA401
- 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
- 1 · 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
Klemme William H ZENITH CH 701
- Aircraft type
- Klemme William ZENITH CH 701
- 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
- N701KC
- Operator
- Klemme William H
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Iowa Falls Municipal Airport (IFA), Iowa Falls, IATo Iowa Falls Municipal Airport (IFA), Iowa Falls, IA
- 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 pattern final
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident occurred on the first test flight following the completion of the amateur-built airplane. The pilot performed high-speed taxi runs followed by a takeoff. The pilot’s flight instructor, who was at the airport watching, observed the airplane southwest of the airport in a spin, from which it recovered. The pilot then flew back to the airport, entered the traffic pattern, and made a radio call that he was going to land. On final approach the airplane appeared to be unstable. The pilot added power and performed a go-around. The airplane came around again for another approach and landing. The airplane appeared to be stable in the traffic pattern until it was on final approach, when it appeared to be unstable as if it were in slow flight. When the airplane was about 200 feet above the ground, the engine noise decreased and the nose immediately dropped along with the right wing. The airplane then impacted terrain short of the approach end of the runway. A postcrash examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any mechanical failures or malfunctions, nor did the pilot mention any problems with the airplane during his radio calls. The pilot had recently started flying again after not having flown since 1984. He had flown 5 hours with a flight instructor in another make and model of airplane during the 7 months prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed while on final approach, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of experience in the model of airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA401
- Event ID
- 20100715X63336
- Case number
- CEN10LA401
- 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: 7abb683d2ece940fda498978892fe0327796fc8b4e81742a5cd57426d736bea2; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:57:10.545Z.