CEN13LA340 · Vans RV12
Vans RV12 · Accident: hard landing
From Chadron Municipal Airport (CDR) to Chadron Municipal Airport (CDR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA340
- 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
Vans RV12
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV12
- 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
- N666BE
- Operator
- William Earl
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chadron Municipal Airport (CDR), Chadron, NETo Chadron Municipal Airport (CDR), Chadron, NE
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
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 stated that, just as the airplane became airborne after takeoff, the tip-up canopy popped open about 3 inches. The pilot grabbed the canopy with his hand and simultaneously lowered the airplane's nose and partially reduced power in an attempt to land on the remaining runway. The airplane nosed over, and the pilot lost grip of the canopy when it "opened to the full vertical position," which caused the airplane's nose to further pitch over. He applied back pressure on the control stick; however, the elevator and rudder did not respond. He was able to level the wings before the airplane landed hard on all three landing gear.
A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the canopy latch operated normally except for some slight resistance when locking the latch into the detent position. The pilot stated that the canopy latch was hard to latch and that he most likely did not secure it properly. The airplane's kit manufacturer reported that it had not conducted any testing on the aerodynamic effects of the airplane's canopy opening in flight; therefore, it could not contest the pilot's claims that the canopy opened to the fully open/vertical position. However, the kit manufacturer did report that it has had a "reasonable amount" of field experience with tip-up canopies opening in flight on similar model airplanes in which no loss of control was reported and that, "While the extent that a canopy tends to open will vary with airspeed, it is our experience that a tip-up canopy will open to a point where the aerodynamic equilibrium is reached...at which point the canopy's position will stabilize." However, because the airplane was in the process of landing, it is likely that the canopy position did not have a chance to stabilize before touchdown. This accident was the first reported instance where pitch authority was affected from a canopy opening in flight on any model equipped with a tip-up canopy, and a lack of flight test data precluded a determination of the aerodynamic effects on the airplane's elevator and rudder if the canopy fully opens during landing.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to properly secure the latch to the tip-up canopy before flight, which resulted in the canopy opening on takeoff and a subsequent loss of airplane control while attempting to land the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA340
- Event ID
- 20130611X55359
- Case number
- CEN13LA340
- 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: 3a5c68951002fcf6890e3c73025a2ee89a466620d1a3726bf8587614c01f2d8b; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:49:55.814Z.