FLIGHT FINDINGSAVIATION OCCURRENCE MAP
Back to map

CEN13CA262 · Engineering & Research 415-C

25 Apr 2013 · Little Falls, MN, United States

Engineering & Research 415-C · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure on approach

From Little Falls-Morrison County-Lindbergh field (LXL) to Little Falls-Morrison County-Lindbergh field (LXL)

Report a problem

Event

NTSB case
CEN13CA262
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

Engineering & Research 415-C

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
N94305
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Little Falls-Morrison County-Lindbergh field (LXL), Little Falls, MNTo Little Falls-Morrison County-Lindbergh field (LXL), Little Falls, 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 pattern downwind
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
Substantial

Cause areas

  • Aircraft › Aircraft power plant

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 reported that he was performing takeoffs and landings when the accident occurred. He said that on one of the landings, when the airplane was on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, the engine went to idle. The pilot attempted to land the airplane on the runway, but the airplane struck a fence short of the runway. Examination of the airplane revealed that the outer flexible sheath of the throttle cable came loose from the crimped metal sleeve, which was part of the instrument panel fitting. Movement of the cockpit throttle control would not actuate the throttle arm of the carburetor. Records indicated that the airplane was manufactured in 1946 and the throttle cable appeared to be original. No entry indicating replacement of the cable was found in the airplane's maintenance records.

Probable cause

The failure of the airplane's throttle cable.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CEN13CA262
Event ID
20130508X42608
Case number
CEN13CA262
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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
  • The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2013-04-26.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: e9098ead524dca1744f728bff3f5287d4251b07318bdf00183b0765c56fcd946; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:27:57.516Z.