CEN12CA027 · Michael Cans RV-8
Michael Cans RV-8 · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From St Landry Parish Ahart Field (KOPL) to Dupuis Airport (LA41)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12CA027
- 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
Michael Cans RV-8
- Aircraft type
- Michael Cans RV-8
- 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
- N610EC
- Operator
- Charles Dupuis, Jr
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Landry Parish Ahart Field (KOPL), Opelousas, LATo Dupuis Airport (LA41), Breaux Bridge, LA
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the landing roll at a private airstrip, the airplane struck a sinkhole and bounced 10 to 15 feet in the air. The pilot added power to cushion the next touchdown, but the airplane drifted to the left and entered tall grass on the side of the runway; the landing gear separated and the airplane sustained substantial damage to the composite bulkhead. The airplane slid approximately 150 feet before coming to a stop on its belly. The pilot said that he did not see the sinkhole. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane after striking an unseen sinkhole during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12CA027
- Event ID
- 20111018X43810
- Case number
- CEN12CA027
- 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: 41adfe396e2ce636234d119fa945df14fb1f32a0b86b13192fb3bdc5227dfbae; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:51:51.761Z.