CEN12CA597 · Bordelon Bruce KITFOX IV 1200
Bordelon Bruce KITFOX IV 1200 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure on approach
From 000 · Castlerock, MN to 000 · Castlerock, MN
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12CA597
- 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
Bordelon Bruce KITFOX IV 1200
- Aircraft type
- Bordelon Bruce KITFOX
- 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
- N396BK
- Operator
- Svien Benny H
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From 000 · Castlerock, MNTo 000 · Castlerock, MN
- 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 go-around
- 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
- Powerplant system/component 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was flying his experimental airplane, practicing touch-and-go landings on his 1,400 foot long private grass airstrip. The weather was clear. During his third touch-and-go, he determined that he was going to land too long so he made a go-around. As he added power for the go-around, he started to feel vibrations and thought that he had a propeller malfunction. The vibrations continued regardless of power setting, so he shut down the engine and intentionally stalled the airplane about 10 feet above the ground to avoid rolling over when the airplane settled to the ground. The airplane came to rest in a corn field. The pilot saw that a fire had started in the engine compartment after ground impact, so he quickly exited the airplane. A post-crash fire then completely consumed the airplane. Examination of the airplane after the accident did not show any evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunction or abnormalities, although the fire damage was too extensive to specifically determine the reason for presumed propeller malfunction. After the examination, the pilot maintained that he was certain that there was a problem with the propeller and that it was the cause of the accident.
Probable cause
Propeller system failure during a go-around maneuver resulting in a forced landing. Contributing to the severity of damage to the airplane was the postimpact fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12CA597
- Event ID
- 20120904X41928
- Case number
- CEN12CA597
- 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: 668601a4c0450f013a847531a09c7926ea59b25398d763da477392cc0a907629; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:40:28.215Z.