CEN11FA616 · Larson KEN W CHRISTEN EAGLE-II
Larson KEN W CHRISTEN EAGLE-II · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Seward Municipal Airport (SWT) to Seward Municipal Airport (SWT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11FA616
- 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
- 2 · 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
Larson KEN W CHRISTEN EAGLE-II
- Aircraft type
- Larson Ken CHRISTEN EAGLE-II
- 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
- N88CE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seward Municipal Airport (SWT), Seward, NETo Seward Municipal Airport (SWT), Seward, NE
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor, who was seated in the front seat, was giving the private pilot, who was seated in the rear seat, a check-out in the single-engine biplane. The engine lost power on takeoff, and the airplane impacted a field. Examination of the airplane and engine revealed no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation; however the mixture control lever, which was located below and to the left of the rear-seated pilot's left knee (there was no mixture control in the front seat), was pulled out about 2 inches. The lever should have been full forward during takeoff. The propeller control was situated directly below the mixture control and found in the full forward position. The propeller control lever is usually adjusted by the pilot after takeoff. Although the mixture and propeller control levers were color-coded, it's possible that the 6'5" private pilot's left knee blocked his view of the controls due to his size and the small cockpit. The mixture control knob was slightly larger than the propeller control knob, but both were similar in shape. It is possible that the pilot thought he was adjusting the propeller control rather than the mixture control on takeoff and inadvertently shut off fuel to the engine. Postaccident examination of the mixture control cable from the cockpit to the engine revealed it moved freely and there was no evidence it had been moved during impact.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadvertent pulling of the mixture control lever on takeoff, which shut down the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11FA616
- Event ID
- 20110904X43712
- Case number
- CEN11FA616
- 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: ff532268d60bb2507bdbd774eadd17a9858f314b037f01e9b5e0e00d18c745f1; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:47:34.244Z.