CEN13LA418 · Marino Benoist Type XIV
Duluth Aviation Institute Marino Benoist Type XIV · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Sky Harbor Airport (KDYT) to Sky Harbor Airport (KDYT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA418
- 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
Marino Benoist Type XIV
- Aircraft type
- Marino BENOIST TYPE XIV
- 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
- N613LD
- Operator
- Duluth Aviation Institute
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sky Harbor Airport (KDYT), Duluth, MNTo Sky Harbor Airport (KDYT), Duluth, 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- 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 accident occurred during the first flight after the seaplane was issued an experimental airworthiness certificate. According to the pilot, the seaplane was a replica of a 100-year-old design and had very unconventional controls. The pilot reported that his initial flight test plan was to take off and then fly 1-2 feet above the water for a couple hundred yards before landing again. However, he stated that immediately after liftoff, the seaplane unexpectedly pitched up steeply. The pilot reduced the seaplane’s pitch attitude to avoid a stall, but the seaplane responded more rapidly than he expected so he increased its pitch attitude to avoid a collision with the water. The seaplane ultimately climbed to about 30 feet above the water before the pilot initiated a descent for a landing. The pilot reported that he “could not control the landing” and that the seaplane collided with the water in a nose-low and right-wing-low attitude. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical anomalies with the seaplane during the accident flight. In addition, he noted that his overall lack of flight experience in the seaplane contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the seaplane during its initial flight test. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's overall lack of flight experience in the seaplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA418
- Event ID
- 20130718X94856
- Case number
- CEN13LA418
- 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: cdb31fe5c67a921afac1fcb7d5b8bca7607bd1a1bce3e41c3a191c424e77b719; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:14:52.616Z.