ERA13LA418 · Fleet 7
Fleet 7 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Flying Circus Aerodrome (3VA3) to Louisa County Airport / Freeman Field (LKU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA418
- 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
Fleet 7
- Aircraft type
- Fleet 7
- 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
- N9433
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flying Circus Aerodrome (3VA3), Bealton, VATo Louisa County Airport / Freeman Field (LKU), Louisa, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 84 years (built 1929)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 on ground
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, following a normal left-crosswind landing, the airplane veered left. Further right rudder application resulted in the airplane continuing to veer left until it exited the edge of the runway and nosed over. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the brake cable was not properly adjusted and that, as a result, the application of the right rudder pedal engaged the left brake. The airplane's last annual inspection occurred about 2 months before the accident, and, during this inspection, maintenance personnel were required to check the brakes for proper adjustment. It is likely that if maintenance personnel had adequately conducted the annual inspection they could have recognized the incorrectly adjusted brakes. No other anomalies or mechanical malfunctions were found that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s improper service, adjustment, and inspection of the brakes, which resulted in a runway excursion and subsequent noseover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA418
- Event ID
- 20130918X50233
- Case number
- ERA13LA418
- 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: 28fc0d63b3c832e7b346c837ec6fd776d10fc89cee253933f4fcc5a3571ac03a; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:52:43.926Z.