CEN18LA043 · Rutten Phil J PIETENPOL
Rutten Phil J PIETENPOL · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Hartford Municipal Airport (HXF) to DeKalb Taylor Municipal Airport (DKB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA043
- 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
- 0
- 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
Rutten Phil J PIETENPOL
- Aircraft type
- Rutten Phil PIETENPOL
- 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
- N502R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hartford Municipal Airport (HXF), Hartford, WITo DeKalb Taylor Municipal Airport (DKB), De Kalb, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 2001)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot was hired to fly the airplane for a positioning flight, which required multiple fuel stops. The pilot had not previously flown this airplane make and model. Before takeoff, he taxied the airplane to become familiar with the flight controls and brakes. The pilot reported that, during the landing roll at the first en route airport, the airplane veered to the left, so he had to unexpectedly apply the brakes, which resulted in a nose-over.
A postaccident examination of the tire marks on the runway revealed that, during the landing roll, the airplane veered to the left and then back to the right before the airplane nosed over on the runway. A functional test of the brakes did not reveal any anomalies. Thus, the accident circumstances were consistent with excessive rudder application during the landing roll followed by excessive brake application, which resulted in the nose-over.
Probable cause
The pilot’s excessive rudder and brake applications during landing, which caused the airplane to nose over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA043
- Event ID
- 20171129X73821
- Case number
- CEN18LA043
- 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: ecbfbe45dccebaf25065f7d5f799d734dea25aeda796796e48f9961c598ba3aa; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:02:59.903Z.