CEN11LA102 · Flight Design Gmbh CTLS
Zone Aviation Flight Design Gmbh CTLS · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Union County Airport (MRT) to Lorain County Regional Airport (LPR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA102
- 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
Flight Design Gmbh CTLS
- Aircraft type
- Flight Design CTLS
- 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
- N30LK
- Operator
- Zone Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Union County Airport (MRT), Marysville, OHTo Lorain County Regional Airport (LPR), Lorain/Elyria, OH
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight, the pilot heard a "snap or pop" sound and then felt an engine vibration before the engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot performed an off-airport landing to a field. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the No. 3 cylinder exhaust spring had experienced fatigue failure due to a non-metallic inclusion that was present at the time the spring was fabricated. The size of the inclusion was above the metallographic wire rod inspection limit used by the wire manufacturer.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during cruise flight due to fatigue failure of a cylinder exhaust spring.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA102
- Event ID
- 20101210X51224
- Case number
- CEN11LA102
- 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. 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: 87d77ecd7ad03ca172ffb18139d31e94e1c623ba822096ca4ffbdebb5d7476c0; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:36:54.891Z.