CEN10LA526 · Thompson Kolb Twinstar Mark
Thompson Kolb Twinstar Mark · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Elkhart Municipal Airport (EKM) to Elkhart Municipal Airport (EKM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA526
- 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
Thompson Kolb Twinstar Mark
- Aircraft type
- Thompson KOLB TWINSTAR MARK
- 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
- N408K
- Operator
- Donald S. Thompson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Elkhart Municipal Airport (EKM), Elkhart, INTo Elkhart Municipal Airport (EKM), Elkhart, IN
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident occurred during the amateur-built airplane's first flight. According to the pilot, the purpose of the flight was to determine the stall speed and handling characteristics of the airplane during the flight. After departure, the pilot circled the airport at an altitude of about 3,000 feet, and then requested a return for landing with air traffic control. A video of the accident showed the airplane in a steep descent toward a grassy area between the runway and taxiway. As the airplane neared the ground, the nose of the airplane oscillated pitching up, down, and up again prior to the nose dropping and the airplane impacting the ground. A witness reported the engine sounded normal during the flight and while the airplane was on final approach. A postaccident examination of the airframe did not reveal any failure or malfunction that would have resulted in the loss of control.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during the landing approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA526
- Event ID
- 20100908X13950
- Case number
- CEN10LA526
- 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: 18f23a0debf9254b575eb805e993fc8836c70319ea4bf6d9681ec5b3fde85504; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:03:09.105Z.