CEN14LA087 · Maarten H Versteeg ZENITH 601XL(B)
Maarten H Versteeg ZENITH 601XL(B) · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Real County Airport (49R) to San Geronimo Airpark (8T8)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA087
- 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
Maarten H Versteeg ZENITH 601XL(B)
- Aircraft type
- Maarten H Versteeg ZENITH 601
- 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
- N581SL
- Operator
- Versteeg Maarten H
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Real County Airport (49R), Leakey, TXTo San Geronimo Airpark (8T8), San Antonio, TX
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, shortly after the airplane departed the runway, the canopy popped open, which caused a large amount of drag, so he pushed the nose of the airplane over to gain airspeed. The airplane subsequently landed hard on the runway. Data extracted from the airplane's primary flight display revealed that the canopy latch became unsecured about 14 seconds into the 18-second flight. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no mechanical anomalies with the canopy latch that would have precluded normal operation. It is likely that the pilot failed to properly secure the latch before takeoff.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane after the canopy opened on takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to properly secure the canopy latch before takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA087
- Event ID
- 20131217X85846
- Case number
- CEN14LA087
- 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: 1a672d1d668caa820a9c4cc89a23b275803b3dfc6b62175234091ca95967f5ad; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:11:43.382Z.