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CEN11CA065 · Welch Thomas RV9

3 Nov 2010 · Sac City, IA, United States

Welch Thomas RV9 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing

From Effingham County Memorial Airport (1H2) to Sac City Municipal Airport (SKI)

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Event

NTSB case
CEN11CA065
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

Welch Thomas RV9

Aircraft type
Welch Thomas RV9
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
N475TW
Operator
Micheal L. Harmon, Jr · private individual
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Effingham County Memorial Airport (1H2), Effingham, ILTo Sac City Municipal Airport (SKI), Sac City, 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
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
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

According to the pilot, the weather information he obtained en route indicated that the wind at his destination airport was from 300 degrees at 25 knots. The airplane encountered turbulence and wind gusts while on final approach and, despite the pilot’s control inputs, the airplane impacted terrain off the right side of the runway. The wind reported 25 miles from the accident site, about 15 minutes after the accident, was from 310 degrees at 23 knots gusting to 33 knots. The wings, firewall, and fuselage sustained substantial damage.

Probable cause

The pilot's loss of directional control while landing with a gusting wind.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CEN11CA065
Event ID
20101110X62153
Case number
CEN11CA065
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: afc90e1df608f356e2e0b0e0345f44c2c0ff7f7a2efd0526da7cde1f019e7488; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:33:23.212Z.