CEN12LA545 · Dykas Kitfox Series 7
Dykas Kitfox Series 7 · Accident on approach
From Monroe, MI (private airstrip) to Monroe, MI
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA545
- 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
Dykas Kitfox Series 7
- Aircraft type
- Dykas KITFOX SERIES 7
- 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
- N646FD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monroe, MI (private airstrip)To Monroe, MI
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an approach for landing, the airplane impacted a marked power line that was about 27 feet high and about 360 feet from the runway at a private airstrip. When the airplane contacted the power line, it descended and impacted terrain about 75 feet from the approach end of the runway. The pilot thought that the airplane was high enough to clear the power line and stated that the accident could have been prevented if he had flown a higher approach and payed more attention to the location of the power line. The pilot stated that there was no mechanical malfunction or failure with the airplane at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The inadequate descent angle flown by the pilot during a final approach for landing, which resulted in an in-flight collision with a power line.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA545
- Event ID
- 20120816X34057
- Case number
- CEN12LA545
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-08-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a128b4945a83781d66705da002a565f296d593eb6f1943e766a5cb021153ace4; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:23:26.026Z.