CEN13LA291 · Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 20-C1
5280 Flying Club Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 20-C1 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Centennial Airport (KAPA) to Centennial Airport (KAPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA291
- 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
Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 20-C1
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA-20
- 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
- N571MA
- Operator
- 5280 Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centennial Airport (KAPA), Englewood, COTo Centennial Airport (KAPA), Englewood, CO
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on final approach during an instructional flight, the engine became unresponsive to throttle movements. The flight instructor took control of the airplane from the student pilot and made a forced landing, during which the airplane rolled onto soft ground and nosed over to an inverted position. Engine examination revealed that the engine throttle lever and throttle cable had become disconnected and that the bolt connecting these two components was located at the bottom of the engine cowling. A self-locking nut, which normally secures this bolt, was missing and not located. Therefore, it is likely that maintenance personnel did not apply sufficient torque to the nut or improperly reused a degraded self-locking nut, which resulted in the eventual loosening of the nut and the in-flight separation of the engine throttle lever and throttle cable.
Probable cause
The in-flight separation of the engine throttle lever and throttle cable due to maintenance personnel not applying sufficient torque to the self-locking nut or improperly reusing a degraded self-locking nut.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA291
- Event ID
- 20130523X25530
- Case number
- CEN13LA291
- 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: df50824d5293b0915c3a5e083c4bf640302baab8e894a540b23a351eacdd12e2; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:38:03.730Z.