CEN11LA558 · Piper AEROSTAR 601P
Piper AEROSTAR 601P · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure during initial climb
From Alpine Casparis Municipal Airport (E38) to Houston Southwest Airport (AXH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA558
- 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
Piper AEROSTAR 601P
- Aircraft type
- Piper AEROSTAR 601
- 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
- N8076J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Alpine Casparis Municipal Airport (E38), Alpine, TXTo Houston Southwest Airport (AXH), Houston, TX
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff, the pilot felt a vibration in the airplane’s controls and elected to return to the departure airport for a precautionary landing. While on short final, the airplane impacted a fence then made a hard landing on the runway. During the landing, the main landing gear was pushed up through the wing and the nose gear collapsed. The airplane subsequently exited the runway before coming to rest in an upright position. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the bolt holding the rudder trim tab to the actuator connecting rod was missing. The absence of this bolt would have allowed the trim tab to swing freely on its hinge. The pilot reported that during the preflight inspection, he observed that the rudder trim system was inoperative. Unable to center the rudder trim tab, the pilot elected to remove the bolt before takeoff. The pilot further reported that he was planning to have the trim system repaired when he returned his home base.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper flare which resulted in a hard landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s improper decision to fly the airplane with a known mechanical deficiency.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA558
- Event ID
- 20110810X23506
- Case number
- CEN11LA558
- 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: 5fb2279a84c956b186bccaaa56b318b167bb31fbe8103a3190711d35f3239e38; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:35:18.847Z.