CEN12LA602 · Aero Vodochody L39C
Aero Vodochody L39C · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Davenport Municipal Airport (DVN) to Davenport Municipal Airport (DVN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA602
- 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
- 1 · 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
Aero Vodochody L39C
- Aircraft type
- Aero Vodochody L39
- 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
- N139GS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Davenport Municipal Airport (DVN), Davenport, IATo Davenport Municipal Airport (DVN), Davenport, IA
- 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
- Maneuvering · aerobatics
- 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 control in flight
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident airplane was part of a 3 airplane airshow demonstration performance. After overflying the spectators and flying away from the flightline, the airplanes were executing a crossover break maneuver, which the accident airplane was in the left wing position. During the crossover break maneuver, the lead airplane first entered a climbing maneuver, the left wing position airplane entered a right turn, and then the right wing position airplane entered a left turn with adequate longitudinal spacing. During the maneuver, the accident airplane entered the right turn, descended, and impacted the terrain. A post-impact fire ensued. No evidence of any in-flight collision with the other airplanes was observed. Witnesses reported that they did not observe any movement of the airplane's flight control surfaces prior to the airplane impacting terrain, which would be inconsistent with the pilot attempting to recover from the descent. No preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures were noted with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The loss of airplane control for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA602
- Event ID
- 20120904X65358
- Case number
- CEN12LA602
- 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: d609196e32ed94f4a6f6e53eba501824ec37f79d30544ccbded91a4893b4c92c; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:43:35.413Z.