CEN15CA166 · Funk B85C
Funk B85C · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure en route
From Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS) to Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15CA166
- 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
Funk B85C
- Aircraft type
- Funk B85
- 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
- N81194
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS), Tulsa, OKTo Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS), Tulsa, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 69 years (built 1946)
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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 he was flying about 700 feet above the ground in cruise flight when he felt the control stick "pop" and the nose of the airplane pitch down. The pilot pulled back the throttle and turned off the magnetos. The passenger adjusted the elevator trim; however, the pitch attitude did not change. The pilot then entered a side slip which brought the nose up to level. He straightened the nose of the airplane just prior to it impacting the terrain. The airplane subsequently flipped inverted resulting in substantial damage to the wings and fuselage.
A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed the UP elevator turnbuckle became detached at the elevator torque tube. The turnbuckle was not safety wired. New cables were installed in the airplane in 2007 and the turnbuckle most likely loosened over time.
Probable cause
The improper installation of the UP elevator cable turnbuckle which became disconnected during the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15CA166
- Event ID
- 20150309X34020
- Case number
- CEN15CA166
- 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: 9a821db45e1571e869a57331655b4ba5b37286cb1eff10258d0f0b1b05f31344; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:08:04.875Z.