CEN18FA003 · Schaffer Fisher Horizon 2
Schaffer Fisher Horizon 2 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Flying Cloud Airport (FCM) to Flying Cloud Airport (FCM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18FA003
- 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
- 1 · 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
Schaffer Fisher Horizon 2
- Aircraft type
- Schaffer FISHER HORIZON 2
- 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
- N428AP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flying Cloud Airport (FCM), Eden Prairie, MNTo Flying Cloud Airport (FCM), Eden Prairie, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2016)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot built the airplane over a 24-year period; the accident occurred on the airplane's first flight after the pilot completed building it. The pilot aborted the first takeoff attempt for unknown reasons. During the second takeoff, the airplane was struggling to gain altitude, pitching up and down, and banking. Several witnesses reported hearing "good" engine sounds. Just before the impact, the airplane was in a steep nose-down, left descending spiral before it descended below the trees, followed by a plume of black smoke.
The airplane's wooden structure was mostly destroyed by impact forces and postimpact fire. Portions of the flight control systems were found in the wreckage; however, it could not be determined if they were installed and rigged properly due to the amount of damage. Witnesses reported hearing the engine operating, and postaccident engine examination did not reveal evidence of any mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Therefore, it is unlikely that the airplane experienced a loss of engine power.
The pilot did not have any flight experience in the accident make and model airplane. Further, he had only flown for 4.8 hours in the 12 months before the accident flight. Although it is likely that the pilot's lack of recent flight experience and time in the airplane's make and model played a role in the accident, investigators were unable to determine the cause of the accident due to thermal damage to the airplanes flight controls.
Probable cause
An inflight loss of control and collision with terrain for undetermined reasons after a thorough examination of the airplane's flight controls was unable to confirm control continuity. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of experience in the accident make and model airplane and his lack of recent flight experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18FA003
- Event ID
- 20171004X21731
- Case number
- CEN18FA003
- 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: 76b1e77fba6b9805ee985fcb06f271de1d3356cb5e1b97d656da2f91f7b9c96d; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:19:33.161Z.