CEN11LA090 · Southerland FREEBIRD LITESPORT U
Southerland FREEBIRD LITESPORT U · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Decatur Airport (DEC) to Decatur Airport (DEC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA090
- 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
Southerland FREEBIRD LITESPORT U
- Aircraft type
- Southerland FREEBIRD LITESPORT
- 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
- N415US
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Decatur Airport (DEC), Decatur, ILTo Decatur Airport (DEC), Decatur, IL
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was performing a high-speed taxi in his amateur-built airplane when it inadvertently became airborne. The inadvertent flight was the airplane's first flight. The pilot requested a landing clearance and was given one. The pilot reported that he had trouble getting the airplane's nose down. He reported a MAYDAY and indicated that he had no control of the airplane. He was given a clearance to land on any runway. During his last transmission, the pilot reported that he could not keep the nose down. The airplane was observed descending tail-end down and then nose down. The airplane impacted the ground, coming to rest about two miles east of the airport. An on-scene examination of the airplane revealed that the wing separated from the fuselage. The separation was consistent with overload. No other anomalies were detected. The on-scene investigation did not document center of gravity or trim settings.
Probable cause
The pilot's reported inability to control his amateur-built airplane for undetermined reasons after the airplane inadvertently became airborne while conducting a high-speed taxi.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA090
- Event ID
- 20101203X93424
- Case number
- CEN11LA090
- 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: 3b106fd9114cc1a7e506eb56a41176fb0d3da1d54a4320bc96c841e3386ae833; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:10:07.547Z.