ERA10CA425 · Ryan NAVION B
Ryan NAVION B · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure during landing
From Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH) to Page Field (FMY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA425
- 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
Ryan NAVION B
- Aircraft type
- Ryan NAVION
- 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
- N5382K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH), Marathon, FLTo Page Field (FMY), Fort Myers, FL
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/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 systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, during a previous flight he discovered that the elevator trim adjustment wheel was binding when it set to the full airplane nose-up position. He planned to have the airplane inspected by a mechanic at the conclusion of that flight, but upon arriving at the destination, all of the facilities were closed for the evening. He subsequently departed for the return flight after picking up passengers, and as he began to trim the airplane for the landing flare, the airplane pitched up uncontrollably. As the pilot attempted to recover the airplane, the left wing struck the ground, resulting in substantial damage. An examination of the wreckage by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that the trim wheel was binding on the instrument panel when the trim was set to a nose-up position. When the trim wheel was removed from the trim system, the remainder of the mechanism was free to move in both the up and down directions.
Probable cause
The binding of the trim wheel on the instrument panel and the pilot’s improper decision to depart with a known mechanical deficiency.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10CA425
- Event ID
- 20100816X82251
- Case number
- ERA10CA425
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-08-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c43c5823b2c3df092cc4dc07e0921a564ac8c02963c00743970d2c29e1d828d6; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:51:23.593Z.