CEN20CA116 · Cub Crafters CC11-160 100
Diamond M Aero Cub Crafters CC11-160 100 · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Happy Canyon Airport (UT97) to Mack, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20CA116
- 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
Cub Crafters CC11-160 100
- Aircraft type
- Cub Crafters CC11
- 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
- N78BK
- Operator
- Diamond M Aero
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Happy Canyon Airport (UT97), Moab, UTTo Mack, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2012)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was conducting an off-airport landing to a river sandbar when he noticed wires in his approach path. He pushed forward on the stick to lower the nose and avoid the wires; however, the airplane touched down in the river just short of the sand bar and nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing strut. The pilot reported that the accident could have been avoided if he had reconnoitered the area for obstacles before beginning the approach. The pilot added that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to reconnoiter the approach area in preparation for an off-airport landing on a sandbar, which necessitated an evasive maneuver to avoid wires and resulted in an unintentional landing in the river short of the sandbar and a subsequent nose-over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20CA116
- Event ID
- 20200310X94826
- Case number
- CEN20CA116
- 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: 7a08bfef85674ce36db865fdaa3b5fd88e8bdfc17f06c7dadc93f66b48645208; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:17:45.766Z.