CEN16LA230 · Glaeser NIEUPORT 11
Glaeser NIEUPORT 11 · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure on approach
From Gardner Municipal Airport (K34) to Gardner Municipal Airport (K34)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA230
- 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
Glaeser NIEUPORT 11
- Aircraft type
- Glaeser NIEUPORT 11
- 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
- N124TG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gardner Municipal Airport (K34), Gardner, KSTo Gardner Municipal Airport (K34), Gardner, KS
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1985)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern crosswind
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot stated that a preflight inspection of his experimental, amateur-built airplane revealed no discrepancies. After takeoff, the pilot completed two circuits around the airport traffic pattern with "no problems." During the upwind leg of the third circuit, he "noticed some vibration" and saw that the horizontal stabilizer was shaking/vibrating. The pilot began an approach for a precautionary landing, but during the base-to-final turn of the approach, the airplane experienced an aerodynamic stall.
The pilot stated that he did not lose elevator control authority during the last legs of the flight but that he was "distracted" by a fear that parts may be separating from the airplane. The airplane, which was built from plans based upon a 100-year old design, was not equipped with a stall warning system. The pilot further reported that the flight control vibration was likely the result of the control cable that linked the two elevators in a "Y" configuration. He stated that the single control cable was not supported for "a number of feet" through guides/fairleads, which can make the elevators "flutter."
Probable cause
The pilot's diverted attention during the approach for the precautionary landing, which resulted in low airspeed, an exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack, and a subsequent aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the control system vibration and the airplane’s lack of a stall warning system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA230
- Event ID
- 20160623X00413
- Case number
- CEN16LA230
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2016-06-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5b36e64a37c8aeecb304bd192c0305094211766750eddec8ac9d5eeb9e1d0e10; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:32:35.584Z.