ERA13FA340 · Folland Aircraft Co Ltd GNAT T 1
Foogair Folland Aircraft Co Ltd GNAT T 1 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Yeager Airport (CRW) to Georgetown County Airport (GGE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13FA340
- 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
Folland Aircraft Co Ltd GNAT T 1
- Aircraft type
- Folland GNAT T 1
- 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
- N18GT
- Operator
- Foogair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yeager Airport (CRW), Charleston, WVTo Georgetown County Airport (GGE), Georgetown, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 50 years (built 1963)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses at the airport reported that the pilot radioed them while on approach to let them know he was coming in to land, and they went outside to view the landing. The airplane crossed over the midfield of the airport and entered a right downwind. The airplane then made a high-speed flyby over the runway between 100 and 200 ft above ground level. At the end of the runway, the airplane pitched up about 30 degrees and began rolling left. According to the witnesses, the first 180 degrees of the aileron roll was "perfect," but, when the airplane reached about the 190-degree point, it abruptly pitched down to the right and collided with the ground. A postcrash fire ensued.
Postcrash fire damage precluded a determination of whether a hydraulic system failure led to the loss of the tailplane/elevator pitch control. However, examination of the two switches on the control stick that operate the electric standby tailplane trim system, which can be used in the event of a hydraulic failure, revealed that the nose-down side of the right switch was inoperative. If a hydraulic failure occurred and this switch was inoperative, the pilot would not have had full tailplane authority during his aerobatic flight maneuver. Although the airplane was equipped with an additional, independent switch that would have allowed control of the tailplane/elevator in the event that this switch failed, the functionality of this switch could not be determined due to damage. Regardless of whether a mechanical problem initiated the pitch anomaly, the low altitude at which the pilot performed the flight maneuver allowed insufficient time for him to regain airplane control before the airplane impacted the ground.
Probable cause
The loss of airplane control for reasons that could not be determined due to postcrash fire damage. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s decision to perform an aerobatic maneuver at low altitude, which did not allow sufficient time for him to regain airplane control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13FA340
- Event ID
- 20130729X54557
- Case number
- ERA13FA340
- 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: 574aaa3b083d0ee9e952cdcc488d3097807eda2eaf8d9b0aa78bf2b8b2017654; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:01:33.217Z.