GAA16CA373 · Canadian CAR & Foundry HARVARD MK IV
Canadian CAR & Foundry HARVARD MK IV · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Harry Clever Field (PHD) to Lake Cumberland Regional Airport (SME)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA373
- 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
Canadian CAR & Foundry HARVARD MK IV
- Aircraft type
- Canadian Car Foundry HARVARD
- 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
- N99CV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harry Clever Field (PHD), New Philadelphia, OHTo Lake Cumberland Regional Airport (SME), Somerset, KY
- Aircraft age
- About 64 years (built 1952)
- 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
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the tailwheel equipped airplane reported that during the landing roll, and after the tail wheel touched down, the airplane swerved to the right, then to the left, and veered off the runway to the right and impacted an airport sign.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right aileron.
Following a postaccident examination of the right/left main landing gear wheel, the pilot sent an email to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Inspector, regarding the Timken bearing for the main landing gear wheel, this email stated in part: "The bearing itself is a stock Timken 18200 bearing, nothing special. While jacked up the wheel turns fine by hand. And this is unlike any failed bearing I've seen. And getting close to a CND (cannot duplicate) condition. I think it is possible the bearing was in the process of failing. At touchdown speeds (approximately 60-80 knots) with little weight on wheels the bearing could lock up or freeze momentarily causing the aircraft to veer right".
A photo of the Timken 18200 tapered roller bearing was sent to the manufacturer for further examination. The manufacturer examined the photo and concluded that there was no evidence of damage or scoring, and further reported that if the bearing would have seized, he would have expected to see damage to the rolling contact surfaces.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll, which resulted in runway excursion, and collision with an airport sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA373
- Event ID
- 20160712X34248
- Case number
- GAA16CA373
- 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: d9e1dfe274975d6400d66e5353c23c153b81b348a1cc58d840acb626ffa369fc; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:39:23.447Z.