CEN10IA453 · Piper PA-32R-301T
South Central Logistics Piper PA-32R-301T · Incident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) en route
From Fox Stephens Field Gilmer Municipal Airport (JXI) to Mount Pleasant Regional Airport (OSA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10IA453
- 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
- Incident
- 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
Piper PA-32R-301T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N4184X
- Operator
- South Central Logistics
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fox Stephens Field Gilmer Municipal Airport (JXI), Gilmer, TXTo Mount Pleasant Regional Airport (OSA), Mount Pleasant, TX
- 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
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- 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
The pilot reported that he was in level flight with the autopilot engaged when the airplane began an uncommanded roll. The pilot disengaged the autopilot and found that the airplane’s ailerons were inoperative. The pilot made a successful landing using the rudder for directional and roll control. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the right aileron primary control cable was severed where it contacted an idler pulley. That pulley would not rotate due to an out-of-tolerance idler pulley outer bearing that restricted the rotation of the pulley. It is likely that the control cable sliding against the seized pulley caused the cable to wear through. The airplane manufacturer issued a maintenance alert following this incident that highlighted the importance of proper and recurring inspections of the flight control cables and pulleys.
Probable cause
The failure of an aileron control cable due to a seized idler pulley bearing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10IA453
- Event ID
- 20100802X31251
- Case number
- CEN10IA453
- 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, damage. 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: 07217aab9dd8adf2a86ace4f9547c73026961da988f9a80c0af7687ba2a2c05c; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:47:17.935Z.