CEN20CA251 · Sonex ONEX
Sonex ONEX · Accident: hard landing
From Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE) to Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20CA251
- 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
Sonex ONEX
- Aircraft type
- Sonex ONEX
- 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
- N951X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE), Minneapolis, MNTo Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE), Minneapolis, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2017)
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he departed in a single-seat homebuilt airplane; however, the airplane did not feel "stable", so he elected to abort the takeoff. During touchdown, the airplane's nose landing gear hit the runway first. After the nose landing gear struck the runway, the rudder was jammed, and the airplane departed the runway surface. The airplane struck a runway light before coming to a stop. Examination of the airplane found that firewall damage had impacted and jammed the nosewheel steering and rudder controls. Damage to the airplane's left-wing leading edge, and substantial damage to the left horizontal stabilizer, and elevator were also noted.
Probable cause
The pilot's hard landing on the airplane's nosewheel, which jammed the steering, and resulted in a runway excursion and impact with runway lights.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20CA251
- Event ID
- 20200625X32845
- Case number
- CEN20CA251
- 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, coordinates. 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: 8fe04fb50dbb29c5eaa53b8438daf9b55d02deabaec8c427c07efaf09e195433; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:56:03.327Z.