ERA13LA183 · Andrews ZODIAC 601XL
Andrews ZODIAC 601XL · Accident en route
From Collegedale, TN to Collegedale, TN
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA183
- 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
Andrews ZODIAC 601XL
- Aircraft type
- Andrews ZODIAC
- 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
- N999NA
- Operator
- David T Richardson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Collegedale, TNTo Collegedale, TN
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 had recently purchased the experimental amateur-built airplane and was not familiar with it. The flight instructor reported that, before the pilot's first instructional flight in the airplane, they were unable to start the engine. The pilot unlatched and raised the canopy to call for assistance from ground personnel. As the ground person started to attach the battery charger to the engine, the pilot unbuckled his seatbelt to assist; however, the ground person told the pilot that he did not need to get out of the airplane. The pilot then hastily attempted to refasten his seatbelt, and the pilots lowered the canopy. The flight instructor stated that the canopy appeared to be flush with the fuselage and latched properly; however, about 9 minutes into the flight, the canopy opened, and the airplane entered a negative G dive, at which point, the pilot was pulled out of his seat and the airplane. The flight instructor remained in his seat with the seatbelt fastened and landed the airplane uneventfully. Examination of the pilot's seatbelt and the canopy latch did not reveal any malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Therefore, it is likely that the pilots did not latch the canopy properly before takeoff and that the pilot did not properly fasten his seatbelt, which allowed him to be pulled from the airplane due to the high G forces after the canopy opened in flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to ensure that his seatbelt was fastened and the pilots' failure to ensure that the canopy was latched properly, which resulted in the pilot's ejection from the cockpit following the opening of the canopy and the subsequent in-flight upset.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA183
- Event ID
- 20130330X85743
- Case number
- ERA13LA183
- 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: 00c9b2f267e6a8f9d78ba7f5b0b7913619aa35e8edf7ab00b31790da4b72c367; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:54:49.379Z.